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WHAT IS WIND ENERGY?The terms "wind energy" or "wind power" describe the process by which the wind is used to generate mechanical power or electricity. Winds are caused
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HOW DO WIND TURBINES WORK?
Wind turbines, like aircraft propeller blades, turn in the moving air and power an electric generator that supplies an electric current. Simply stated, a wind turbine is the opposite of a fan. Instead of using electricity to make wind, like a fan, wind turbines use wind to make electricity. The wind turns the blades, which spin a shaft, which connects to a generator and makes electricity.
Most large modern wind turbines are horizontal-axis turbines. This graphic illustrates its main components:
Most large modern wind turbines are horizontal-axis turbines. This graphic illustrates its main components:
This animation explains turbine components in more detail: How wind turbines work
Where can wind turbines be applied?
Wind Turbines are used in a variety of applications – from harnessing offshore wind resources to generating electricity for a single home:
Large wind turbinesUtility-scale turbines are most often used by utilities to provide power to a grid and range from 100 kilowatts to several megawatts. They are often grouped together in wind farms to produce large amounts of electricity. Wind farms can consist of a few or hundreds of turbines, providing enough power for tens of thousands of homes.
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Small wind turbinesDistributed or "small" wind can be used for turbines of 100 kilowatts or smaller to directly power a home, farm or small business as its primary use.
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Offshore wind turbinesThose turbines use offshore wind and erect in bodies of water around the world.
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Economic Advantages
Nearby several environmental benefits, there are considerable economic advantages:
- Revitalize Rural Economies: Wind energy can diversify the economies of rural communities, adding to the tax base and providing new types of income. Wind turbines can be built on existing farms or ranches. This greatly benefits the economy in rural areas, where most of the best wind sites are found. Wind power plant owners make rent payments to the farmer or rancher for the use of the land, providing landowners with additional income. Moreover, wind turbines can add a new source of property taxes in rural areas that otherwise have a hard time attracting new industry. For example, each 100 MW of wind development in southwest Minnesota has generated about $1 million per year in property tax revenue and about $250,000 per year in direct lease payments to landowners.
- Free Fuel: Unlike other forms of electrical generation where fuel is shipped to a processing plant, wind energy generates electricity at the source of fuel, which is free. Wind is a native fuel that does not need to be mined or transported, taking two expensive costs out of long-term energy expenses.
- Price Stability: The price of electricity from fossil fuels and nuclear power can fluctuate greatly due to highly variable mining and transportation costs. Wind can help buffer these costs because the price of fuel is fixed and free. It's an indigenous, homegrown energy source that helps stabilize the cost of electricity and reduces vulnerability to price spikes.
- Promotes Cost-Effective Energy Production: The cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen from nearly 40¢ per kWh in the early 1980s to 2.5-5¢ per kWh today depending on wind speed and project size.
- Creates Jobs: Wind energy projects create new short and long term jobs. Related employment ranges from meteorologists and surveyors to structural engineers, assembly workers, lawyers, bankers, and technicians. Wind energy creates 30% more jobs than a coal plant and 66% more than a nuclear power plant per unit of energy generated. In 2014, the wind sector invested more than $8 billion of private capital in the U.S. economy to build projects and employed more than 73,000 workers. According to the Wind Vision Report, wind has the potential to support more than 600,000 jobs in manufacturing, installation, maintenance, and supporting services by 2050.
- Domestic source of energy: The nation's wind supply is abundant. Over the past 10 years, cumulative wind power capacity in the United States increased an average of 30% per year, outpacing the 28% growth rate in worldwide capacity.
- Low operating cost: Wind power is cost-effective. It is one of the lowest-priced renewable energy technologies available today, costing between four and six cents per kilowatt-hour, depending upon the wind resource and the particular project’s financing.
- Space-Efficient: The largest wind turbines are capable of generating enough electricity to meet the energy demand of 600 average U.S. homes. The wind turbines can`t be placed too close to each other, but the land in-between can be used for other things. This is why many farms would benefit more from installing wind turbines as opposed to solar panels. Farmers and ranchers can continue to work the land because the wind turbines use only a fraction of the land.
ECONOMIC CHALLENGES
- Must still compete with conventional generation sources on a cost basis: The cost-competitiveness of wind power is highly debatable. Even though the cost of wind power has decreased dramatically in the past 10 years, the technology requires a higher initial investment than fossil-fueled generators hence typically rely heavily on financial incentives. This is to give wind power a fair chance in the fierce competition against already well-established energy sources such as fossil fuels and coal. Solar power is generally regarded as the first choice for homeowners looking to become energy producers themselves, but wind turbines make an excellent alternative in some situations. It would take a wind turbine of about 10 kilowatts and $40,000 to $70,000 to become a net electricity producer. Investments like this typically break even after 10 to 20 years.
- Good wind sites are often located in remote locations, far from cities where the electricity is needed: Transmission lines must be built to bring the electricity from the wind farm to the city.
- Might not be the most profitable use of the land: Land suitable for wind-turbine installation must compete with alternative uses for the land, which might be more highly valued than electricity generation.
- Unpredictable: Wind is unpredictable and the availability of wind energy is not constant. Wind energy is therefore not well suited as a base load energy source. If we had cost-effective ways of storing wind energy the situation would be different. We can hope for breakthroughs in energy storage technologies in the future, but right now, wind turbines have to be used in tandem with other energy sources to meet our energy demand with consistency.
- Externalities: The main externalities of concern are the aesthetic impact of wind turbines, the noise they create (not a problem with offshore wind turbines) and bird mortality from collisions with turbine blades. Noise and bird mortality may be mitigated by appropriate siting of wind facilities, though wind power is not completely flexible in siting, given the need to be in the windiest locations. Aesthetic impact is not easily mitigated, as wind power requires large structures that are not easily hidden. But perhaps all beauty is subjective, and some of us find wind turbines attractive, in part because of the renewable energy transition they represent. Offshore wind energy is a renewable energy resource with the potential for fewer negative externalities than onshore.
How loud is a wind turbine?
summary
For the sake of the planet, national security, rural economic revitalization, and resource preservation we must promote a renewable energy economy. Wind power can be a cornerstone of that sustainable energy future because it is affordable, provides jobs, substantial and distributed revenue, and treads lightly on our environment without causing pollution, generating hazardous wastes, or depleting natural resources.
What about the future?
Exemplified by the US, this interactive map shows big potential for America's energy future.
What about the future?
Exemplified by the US, this interactive map shows big potential for America's energy future.
Feeling fit in wind energy? → Test your wind energy IQ!
Did you know? → 26 Interesting Wind Energy Facts
Did you know? → 26 Interesting Wind Energy Facts