If a wind turbine produced 2.5mw how much power is that? Could it power a house, a few houses?

Question

Yes I meant 2.5 MW if it helps the query also relates to if the wind turbine generated this power if used in say a third world country would it supply enough for a small village?

Answer 1

First, one would need to get the symbology right: "m" (lower case m) stands for milli, that means 1/1000. 2.5 milliwatt is the power of a single small light emitting diode. Capital "M" stands for mega, that means one million. 2.5 Megawatt is a lot of power. A normal house uses about the equivalent of 4 kilowatt day in and day out (of course, it varies from hour to hour, and from day to day over the course of a year, so 2.5 MW is enough to power over 600 houses on average (due to peak demand variations, the actual number of houses may however have to be lower).

Of course, the other aspect of wind turbine is that they are irregular in their power production. When there is little or no wind, no power is generated.

Answer 2

I hope you mean 2.5MW, as 2.5mW is 0.0025 watt.

2.5MW will power quite a few houses. National US average house usage is about 1kW, with peaks of 10kW, usually during the summer.

If you go by the peak, then 2500kW will power 250 houses. If you go by the average, then 2500 houses.

edit: as vincent says, when there is no wind, there are zero houses powered.  2.5MW is probably the output at the design wind, ie, the wind level the turbine was designed for. Winds below or above that will produce less power.

Wind turbines operate best when hooked into the national grid, so other facilities can pick up the load when the wind is absent.

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