What Is A Wind Turbine And How It Works?

Humans have been using the motion energy or wind flow since many years, for various purposes such as irrigation and sailing. Now-a-days wind energy's utility is connected with wind turbines and multi-turbine wind farms. Wind turbine uses wind power to produce renewable and clean energy to power businesses and homes.

Wind energy or wind power describes the process through which the wind is utilized to produce electricity and mechanical power. Wind turbines transform the wind's kinetic energy into the mechanical power. This mechanical power is used for some particular tasks, for example pumping water and grinding grain. In addition to that mechanical power gets converted into electricity by using an electrical generator.

Let's understand how do wind turbines generate electricity? To state it in a simple manner, a wind turbine functions just the opposite of a fan. That is, the fan uses electricity to produce wind, whereas the wind turbines use wind to produce electricity. The wind revolves the blades, which turn a shaft that is connected to an efficient generator and thus, electricity is produced.

Wind turbines are available in many shapes and sizes. Small turbines are used to power a single home and have a capacity of below 100 kilowatts. A number of large commercial sized turbines have a capacity of about 5 megawatts. Large turbines are usually grouped together into wind farms that supply power to the electrical grid. In other words, wind farms are clusters of wind turbines used to generate electricity.

A wind farm typically has dozens of wind machines scattered over a big area. As a rule, wind speed augments with altitude and over open areas with no wind turbulences. Good sites for wind farms are the tops of rounded hills, mountain gaps, and open shorelines or plains that produce wind funneling.

Modern wind turbines are basically of two types: the horizontal-axis and the vertical-axis design.

Horizontal-axis wind turbines have blades similar to airplane propellers. A standard horizontal wind turbine stands as tall as a 20 storied building. It usually has two or three blades that extent 200 feet across. These wind turbines stand tall and broad to capture more wind.

Vertical-axis wind turbines have blades, which go from top to bottom. The frequently used vertical-axis wind turbine (Darrieus wind turbine) is of an eggbeater-style. This turbine typically stands 100 feet high and 50 feet broad.

Choosing the best site for a wind turbine is important. An area is needed with moderately high average wind speeds, with minimum or no turbulence. To get this, the turbine is in general mounted on a tall tower well above all obstacles.

Wind turbines are used extensively worldwide. There are thousands of wind turbines in use, with a total capacity of 73,904 MW. The World Wind Energy Association expects 160GW of capacity to be installed worldwide by the year 2010. The countries such as the United States, Germany, Spain, India, and Denmark have made the huge investments in wind turbine generated electric power.