According to WindPoweringAmerica.gov's "Landowner Frequently Asked Questions and Answers" ( http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/pdfs/wpa/34600_landowners_faq.pdf ), wind towers are typically placed 5 to 10 rotor diameters apart. (Let's assume that this distance applies in each direction.)

According to this article: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-02-23-windmills-midwest_x.htm the big windmills in California are 300 feet tall, and judging by some pictures of windmills ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/windmill ), the rotor radius is about half the height of the tower, making the diameter about equal to the height of the tower.

Using this information, we can estimate that placing them 7.5 rotor diameters apart will mean 2250 feet between windmills.

Since we need 77,000 wind towers, and the most efficient use of space is to place them in a square piece of land, we take the square root of 77,000 to find out how many wind towers will be in each row: approximately 278.

So 278 towers multiplied by 2250 feet between them gives us 625,500 feet for each side of our area of land. This is 391,250,250,000 square feet (391 billion square feet), or about 9 million acres, or about 14,000 square miles (about the combined size of Vermont and Connecticut, according to http://www.theus50.com/area.shtml ).

Note that this is all very "back of a napkin" math.
Source(s):
http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/pdfs/wpa/34600_landowners_faq.pdf
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-02-23-windmills-midwest_x.htm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/windmill
http://www.theus50.com/area.shtml

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