why wind turbines have such skinny blades. Wouldn’t more surface area be more effective?

Question

why wind turbines have such skinny blades. Wouldn’t more surface area be more effective?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

Sure, covering more area allows you to generate more torque with the same wind, but this isn’t cost-effective – heavy blades need stronger towers to keep them steady, and the primary purpose of wind turbines is to make cheap electricity.

So building many skinny 3-blade towers is cheaper and good enough per tower that this is the winning design.

In the future it might change, there is active research for single-bladed and twin blade designs which will be even cheaper.