Wind Turbines Basics

The wind energy is being harnessed since many years. Though wind energy is spread out and not uniform, it contains a great amount of energy. Sophisticated wind turbines have been developed to transform this energy into mechanical power and electricity.

Now-a-days wind turbine technology is more efficient and sophisticated than the similar technology just about 10 years ago. Mainly due to technological improvements, the cost of energy produced from wind turbines has declined approximately 80 per cent in the past two decades. And this has made wind energy a renewable resource competitive among the conventional sources of energy such as natural gas and coal.

Wind turbines are mounted on a tall tower in order to catch most of the wind energy. At about 100 feet or more above the ground, wind turbines catch wind fast as there is no wind turbulence on that high level.

Turbines capture the wind's energy with their big blades that look similar to airplane-propellers. Typically, two or three blades are attached with a shaft to form a rotor.

A blade acts just akin to an airplane wing. When the wind blows, a low-pressure air is created on the downwind area of the blade. This low-pressure air then pulls the blade toward it, and as a result the rotor turns. This is process is known as a lift.

The strength of the lift is actually quite stronger than the wind's power against the front area of the blade, which is called a drag. The combination of the lift and the drag causes the rotor to revolve like a propeller. And then the spinning shaft turns a generator to produce electricity.

Wind turbines are used as stand-alone applications and they are also connected to a utility power grid system.

For utility power grid system, large quantities of wind turbines are generally built close together to form a wind plant. That is, a wind plant is the cluster of wind turbines used to generate electricity. A number of electricity providers these days use wind plants to provide power to their customers.

Large scale utility wind turbines are normally connected to the utility power grid. They are used to provide electrical power to a very large region. Each of these large scale wind turbines have blade that extends up to 150 ft and are mounted on a 200 ft high tower. They produce enough electricity for about 600 average homes in a year.

Stand-alone wind turbines are often used for crushing grains or water pumping. However, farmers or homeowners, who live in open areas or windy regions, use wind turbines in order to cut their electricity bills.

Small wind turbines also have potential same as the distributed energy resources. Distributed energy resources means a range of small, modular power generating technological equipments that can be shared to better the operation of the electricity delivery method.