Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote: > On average, wind requires about 200 times as much steel and concrete > structural material as a natural gas turbine plant of the same capacity. > Factoid: a two-megawatt (faceplate) wind turbine weighs about 250 tons (or > more), including the tower, nacelle, generator housing and blades, but it > only works near full capacity about 40% of the time. . . . > The average power year-round is around 30% of nameplate for most land locations, and 40% at sea.
You are talking about the energy payback time. A wind turbine takes 5 to 8 months to generate enough energy to build another wind turbine. See: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140616093317.htm That's about the same as a conventional gas or coal generator plant. It is much less than a nuclear plant. The PV energy payback time used to be years, but it has greatly improved in the last 10 or 20 years. > It requires about half a ton of coal to make a ton of steel. > A lot of steel is recycled these days, with a much lower energy cost. - Jed
