I don't think the top surface area of a typical wind turbine is even close to being large enough for that to pay back. The largest turbines (Enercon E-126 [1])

I don't think the top surface area of a typical wind turbine is even close to being large enough for that to pay back. The largest turbines (Enercon E-126 [1]) are rated at 7 MW of wind power. The largest photovoltaic solar plant (Sarnia [2]) in the world is rated at 80 MW, i.e. about 11 of the largest wind turbines. The cell surface area of that plant is 966,000 square meters. Again, I don't think the surface area of the top of a single wind turbine's gondola quite suffices. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine#Largest_capacity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine#Largest_capacity [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarnia_Photovoltaic_Power_Plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarnia_Photovoltaic_Power_Plant