Capacity factor of Wind farm

Question

A wind farm consists of 30 x 5 MW wind turbines, and generates 500 GWh of electricity each year. What is the capacity factor of the wind farm?

Answer 1

Hmmm.  I would interpret the question as "At what percent of its annual capacity is the wind farm actually performing?"

 

The question is somewhat meaningless in real life, but here's the setup:

 

Cap = (500 GWh * 1000 Gwh/Mwh)  / (30 units * 5 Mw/unit * 365.25 days/year * 24 hrs / day)

 

= 500000 / 1314900 =  .38026

 

38% of capacity is an amazingly high number in the windfarm industry.