Which is more efficient small or large wind turbine?
Hey Shalom, good day to you. Your question is not really answerable as it is written. From the standpoint of efficiency, fewer blades does translate to better efficiency, meaning how much energy you can extract from a given wind and swept area, I’ll explain in a moment. Mike is correct that there is no one design that is best, whether you’re speaking of cost per unit power, power per unit wind, man-hours of maintenance per unit power and so on. If there were one best design, all windmills would be the same. They aren’t, and there’s a very good reason. Mad Max is correct also, the utility sized turbines use less material per unit power output. The other advantage to them is you need fewer people to maintain them per unit power they put out, this is what really endures them to utility companies. They do cost more in terms of purchase price for manufacturing, shipping and installation, but once you have one of those beasts running, they look very good on the balance sheet for years to com
