Green Stack: Off Shore Wind

Here we will calculate the amount of power generated per person per day if the entire U.S coastline was covered in wind turbines 10 km out to sea.  Of course this would never happen because people would complain.  However, as shown in the graph below (NREL), the U.S has a relatively high offshore wind capacity.





Because deep ocean wind farms are not yet feasible, we will just be focusing on the shallow (<25 m) wind farms.  The U.S has about 12,000 miles of coastline, with about 6.2 miles out to sea being <25 m.  This gives a total feasible turbine area of about 74,000 miles^2.


We assume all turbines would be the largest and highest output on the market, turbine dia. = 126 m or .078 miles, output= 7.58 MW (Enercon E-126).  Also, the turbine need to be spaced 5*diameter apart.  So...


((5*0.078)^2 mi^2)/4 turbines * 1/74,000 miles^2 = ~2 million turbines


2,000,000 turbines * 7.58 MW = 15,160,000 MW


(15,160,000 MW/24 h)/300,000,000 million people = 2.1 kwh/person/day