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This is my third post giving factual data about the power per unit land area of wind farms in Britain. My first post described a farm near the coast made of small machines (27m diameter); the power per unit area was 1.4 W/m2. The second post cherry-picked the best windfarm in Britain (located in Shetland); the power per unit area was 6.5 W/m2. The turbines there have diameter about 50m. Now returning from mid-ocean, let's ask "what do really big land-based turbines deliver?" I picked the Glass Moor windfarm, which has eight 2 MW machines, each with a diameter 82m. (It's the biggest windfarm close to Cambridge; no special cherry-picking, here.) Looking at the OS map, I judged the area occupied by the windfarm to be 2 km2. Based on one year's data, the average output of this windfarm (per unit land area) is 2.2 W/m2.
These data support the view that 2 W/m2 is a good ballpark figure for the power per unit area of a modern windfarm in England.
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