Thursday, September 8, 2011

Wind Power Available in the United States

According to some very rough estimation and calculation the United States could potentially produce about 4.714x10^11 kWh each day from wind energy.  This exceeds 1.025x10^10 kWh (the approximate amount of energy used by the United States in a day) by a factor of 45.  It should be mentioned, however, that these numbers may have some inaccuracies because the entire middle third of the country would have to be covered with wind turbines every 25m with no regard for homes, businesses, terrain, or cost.  That being said, below is a table of the numbers used in the calculations and a summary of the results.


The reasoning behind the use of "1/3" of the area of the United States for "wind energy supported area" is based on the diagram seen below.  According to the chart, the areas in white are not suitable for producing wind energy because of low winds or bad terrain.  It was approximated that the area deemed suitable was one third of the country.  Since the numbers for average temperature and wind speed in the middle third of the country were not available, the numbers from Iowa (a fairly average state in both of these areas) were used.


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