Wind Power Calculator

What This Wind Power Calculator Screens

This calculator is designed for early-stage wind screening rather than full project design. It can estimate output at one wind speed, annual energy from a simplified power-curve model, and wind resource class after correcting a measured wind speed to hub height. It does not replace manufacturer power curves, wake modeling, curtailment studies, icing review, or interconnection analysis.

Available Wind Power and the Betz Limit

The raw kinetic power in the wind stream is estimated from:

P = 1/2 x rho x A x V^3

• rho is air density in kg/m3
• A is rotor swept area in m2
• V is wind speed in m/s

The page also shows the Betz-limit power, which is 59.3% of the raw wind power. Real turbines operate below that limit, and this screen estimates operating-point output from a simple cut-in to rated-speed cubic curve capped at a reference rated power.

Annual Energy Screen

Annual energy production is estimated by combining the same power curve with a simple Weibull distribution using a fixed shape factor of k = 2. This is useful for rough comparisons, but it is not a bankable yield forecast. Wake losses, grid curtailment, turbulence, availability history, icing, and manufacturer-specific controls can materially change the result.

Wind Resource Mode

The resource screen applies a simple open-terrain power-law correction to move a measured wind speed from one height to a target hub height. The corrected speed is then used to calculate wind power density and a simple resource class. Use site-specific shear data whenever available because terrain roughness and obstructions can move real projects far away from the default alpha = 0.14 assumption.

Worked Screening Example

An 80 m rotor at 10 m/s and standard air density has about 3.08 MW of raw wind power crossing the rotor and about 1.83 MW at the Betz limit. With the utility-scale profile used on this page, the simple operating-point screen returns about 0.90 MW at that wind speed.