What's the optimal wind turbine setup?

[koder]

I've done a lot of searching to find a guide/tutorial on the optimal setup for wind turbines (most power generated over the smallest area), but all I can find is these 3 tips:

1. Place the turbines 8+ blocks above ground
2. Keep turbines 8 blocks apart (or 6 blocks between the edges of their bounding boxes)
3. Put the turbines in a high oxygen area

However I saw a comment from a youtube account named Ackemaa stating that there is a very specific method to how the power output is calculated and it's possible to compact it further than having the turbines 8 blocks apart.

In light of this, does anyone know the absolute best arrangement for turbines?

[ShadedMJ]

Be prepared for a ton of suggestions. Here's mine. It is non-intuitive though. About 5x the power output.

8 above ground, like you said.
9 blocks apart
At the block one below where the 'up' turbine is, place another armor and 4 more wind turbines around horizontally. The tops of each will almost touch.

badly drawn diagram. 'a' is armor 'w' is wind turbine

    w        w
    w        w
    w        w
    a        a
wwwaaawwwwwwaaawww
    a        a
    a        a
    a        a
    a        a
    a        a
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[Buzzard]

Windmills don't care about O2 levels. What they DO care about is the density of the atmosphere. Windmills will work just fine on Mars (no O2 in the atmosphere) and the Alien planet (very low O2, in a thin layer), and any of the moons that have atmosphere. Breathable atmosphere is NOT required, just SOME sort of atmo.

Ideally, your windmill farm would be down at 'sea level', or the lowest naturally generated place on the planet, 8 blocks off the ground, with that 8 blocks of clearance to its sides.
The same setup, high on a mountain, will have lower output. The lower O2 levels there is just coincidental, and doesn't affect the windmill. The low O2 level WILL be a rather obvious hint that there's lower atmospheric density at that height above 'sea level'.

[Candarian]

i would go with 14 blocks high

then build a windmill armor armor(center) armor windmill vertical

than one armor block to the side

and than again a windmill armor armor(center) armor windmill horizontal

so that il lool like armor windmills armor windmills(where the windmills change between horizontal and vertical)

its space efficent i think and dont wast much power(its not perfect but good-optimal)

[Candarian]

and one with optimal

10 high

than u build a #

the upper left cross is where the tower is

and than every line is
a windmill armor armor(cross) armor armor armor(cross) armor windmill

and on top of the "tower" 1 armor and a windmill
and on the lower right cross another armor and a windmill

that way u should get 10 windmills at full power

[Genjokoan]

This is what creative mode is all about. Or survival with a brief sidetrack in god mode. An engineer would conduct their own tests rather than bet their life on unsubstantiated data from unknown sources.

Go forth and engineer.

[us271934-Слава Україн]

Originally posted by Genjokoan:

This is what creative mode is all about. Or survival with a brief sidetrack in god mode. An engineer would conduct their own tests rather than bet their life on unsubstantiated data from unknown sources.

Go forth and engineer.

+1

Creative or God mode is the low cost laboratory of SE. You can do experiments that would be way too labor and material expensive in regular Survival. I've found it is especially useful if think I have the most fantastic idea ever to occur to a human. It's amazing how many times it is really an idea that sucks rocks. lol

[koder]

Thanks all. Looks like it's time for some creative mode experimentation then :)

[budisourdog]

Little exploit: Its also possible to make a totally self sufficient underground base if you detonate a warhead then place a wind turbine in the center of the newly created hollow space...

[Spaceman Spiff]

You can actually place 12 wind turbines in an underground spherical void created by a warhead; most will be running sub-optimally, but you'll get power 24/7 nevertheless.

[Buzzard]

Windmills check for clearance by doing a raycast in 8 directions for 8 blocks. So long as the cave is side enough, and the windmill sufficiently off the floor, you can run windmills underground.

On a similar note, solar panels do a clearance raycast for 100m out, towards the sun. Again, if there's enough unobstructed space around the solar panel, it will function underground.

[Demented]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1748345784
Shows the eight lateral directions that wind turbines check, as well as the apparent maximum distance.

Removing blocks wouldn't increase the output of these two wind turbines. However, they're also fairly high up and can't reach the full 400 kw, so it may be that they're capped at suboptimal performance even before they're checking for clearance.

You can get a decent 200kw from wind turbines with only two unobstructed directions and a little breathing room in the others, which is convenient if your base is small or underground. This also makes it easier to cram them close together, as otherwise you need to play queen's chess with them.

[JaJaBings]

https://imgur.com/a/kw5ivB5
I did some in depth testing with a projector and the lineout of

Originally posted by Demented:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1748345784
Shows the eight lateral directions that wind turbines check

The result is repeateble chess style pattern.

www
www www
www www
a a a www
a a a a a a a
a www a a a
a www www
a www www
a a a a www

This can be mirrored on the downside
you can make the plattform two blocks thicker to add windmills to the side in between, but they wont run at full efficency.

[ShadedMJ]

I prefer this :
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2492984629