Small Wind Sculptures

Massachusetts has subsidized small wind turbines for a number of years. A report reviewing their success--or, in this case, their abject failure--showed of 36 projects funded by the State since 2000, only 21 were still functioning by the time of the report, a 42% failure rate. And, of the operating turbines, the average production (capacity factor) was 3.9%, i.e., a 10 kw turbine produced only 390 watts.

For comparison, typical on-shore commercial (medium and large scale) run at 20-30% capacity factors. Offshore wind farms may run at 40% capacity factor - ten times better.

The British had a similar effort and reported this: The capacity factor for 26 small turbines (including breakdowns) over 168,950 hours was 0.85%. So 214 kw of turbines produced 1.8 kw. Factoring out the non-functional turbines, the capacity factor was 4.15%, just slightly above Massachusetts. A quote from the British review: "The poorest site generated an average of 41Wh per day when in operation or 15 kWh per year, which is less than the energy it consumed to run the turbine’s electronics."

It is easy to pick on these governmental forays into the real world but the point is not so much about the failures, the point is why do people with political science degrees try engineering as an avocation?