Wind turbines have a "life" in excess of 20-25 years. However, a number of main components will be replaced during that time. The gearbox and generator will each probably be replaced several times. The main bearing two to three times. Blades will likely be replaced once (maybe more depending upon lightning damage). And of course smaller components.They spent some obscene amount of money building a wind farm off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. The total program was cut in half because enough people saw costs ballooning out of control; $4billion to make 806 megawatts on windy days.
In Texas, the average household uses 36 kWh of electricity per day.
A megawatt is 1000 kW.
If I'm looking at this accurately, $4bil wind farm would power 22,388 houses. $178,667 per house to power them for the first year. Wind turbines have an estimated lifespan of 20-25 years, but in the real world I think more accurately thats 10-15 years not counting maintenance, survey, and other costs. So amortize that over about 10 or so years, thats nearly $18,000 per year per house. How are they ever making their money back? Even if those stupid things do last 20 years, I think my highest electricity bill for my rather small house in the burbs was $400 because of a crummy heat pump and old windows. They'd have to charge $1000 per month, every month for every house to ever hope to make a profit because at the end of 20 years they have to replace them!
Thats not even assuming there are going to be shutdowns for repairs, non-windy days (but on the ocean its generally windy) or anything else going wrong. These only work with subsidies.
Offshore wind would go away if not for taxpayer subsidies. Onshore wind would be drastically scaled back if taxpayer subsidies went away.
Onshore, a good capacity factor is around 40%. Capacity factors of 32-25% are not unusual for wind sites. Offshore might be a little higher. {E.g., on average, what percent of the nameplate (maximum output) rating of the turbine is produced.}