Wind Turbine

Power from moving air

Built in both ARK: Survival Evolved and ARK: Survival Ascended, the Wind Turbine feeds an electrical grid with power taken from the wind. The game's description: "Converts the force of the wind into electricity." It came with the Scorched Earth DLC, and the ARK Wiki also lists it for Fjordur, Valguero, Lost Island, Ragnarok, Genesis: Part 2 and Crystal Isles.

Building a turbine

The engram unlocks at level 50 for 18 engram points. A Fabricator or a Tek Replicator makes it from:

• 75 Metal Ingot or Scrap Metal Ingot
• 25 Electronics
• 20 Cementing Paste or Achatina Paste

Crafting takes 3 seconds and gives 8 XP. In ASA the turbine weighs 70, and it does not stack. Loot is another source: 90 crate types can contain one, for example the Astraeos Desert Red and Yellow crates, Astral Pulmonoscorpius Royalty and Genesis Blue.

Reading the wind

Hold H anywhere to see the map name followed by a wind percentage. It shows how much wind the area has and, roughly, how often a turbine there will produce power. The wiki counts unknown regions as 100%, as well as the Wilderness regions of Scorched Earth.

Turbines on one grid each work on their own, but in the same wind area they switch on and off at about the same moment, so building several adds little uptime. At 100% wind a turbine is good for running Refrigerators; below that, the wiki says an Electrical Generator is needed to fill in. Without a generator it still gives Cryofridges enough power to keep Cryopods alive, and it can run a Chemistry Bench now and then.

Map by map

• Scorched Earth and Ragnarok: both have wind readings and full support for the turbine.
• Fjordur, Lost Island, Valguero and Crystal Isles: a region with 80% wind or more behaves like 100%, and the reading shows in the Survivor Inventory rather than the extended HUD.
• Genesis: Part 1, Genesis: Part 2, The Center and The Island: power only between 07:00 and 20:00, which is 13 of the 24 hours.
• Extinction: only in the Wasteland, again between 07:00 and 20:00.
• Aberration: no power across most of the map, except in the uncommon Wilderness areas with 100% wind.

Range, cables and resets

In ASA a turbine sends power wirelessly over 8,000 Unreal Engine units, almost 27 foundations, while any power consumer looks for a source within 10,000 units, around 33 foundations. Through cables its reach stops at 29 cable lengths, and anything past that stays unpowered. The wiki adds two cautions: after some server resets a turbine may need to be destroyed and placed again before it powers a grid, and a generator using auto power does not shut itself off when the turbine comes back on.