Wind Turbines

Improved Essays
There are forces on the earth that can be harnessed and turned into some form of energy. Wind is one of those forces. It is especially viable in areas that are flat. Wind energy is an up and coming form of renewable energy that will thrive as technology advances. Wind energy is produced by wind turbines. These turbines work kind of like a fan in reverse. Instead of have electricity turn the blades of the fan, wind turns the blades in order to produce electricity. The blades are connected to a shaft inside the turbine and when the wind turns blades, the blades turn the shaft. The shaft is connected to a generator in which makes the electricity. (How Do Wind Turbines Work?) The turbines are connected to transmission grids in order to carry the electricity generated to the areas needed. (Block) Wind turbines come in multiple sizes that range from big commercial sizes to residential sizes. There are two different types of commercial wind turbines, vertical-axis and horizontal-axis. Horizontal-axis has two or three blades and vertical-axis looks like an egg beater. The towers can range from 200 to 320 feet in height, with the blades ranging from 80 to 100 feet in length. (Commercial-Scale Wind Turbine Generators in the OPPD Service Area, 2006, p.1)These turbines can produce between 10 kilowatts to several megawatts. (How Do Wind …show more content…
One of the biggest things I learned is how much power can actually be generated by wind turbines. I was always skeptical of wind energy because of the fact that wind comes and goes. As technology advances, wind turbines will become less expansive to install. They will also be able to generate more power, since the generators will keep improving and the blades will become lighter. I have only seen one wind farm in my life time and that was in Oregon. I was amazed on how big the wind turbines are. I would have to say that if I had a choice, I would not want to see them from my

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Is Wind Energy Practical?

    • 1020 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Some days the wind won 't blow therefor no energy is produced .This is because as u all know that the wind doesn 't blow all the time. And for wind energy to be produced the wind has to be blowing enough to propell the blades on the turbine along enough to produce energy . This is really the best reason for why the wind energy is not taken off right now . Little maintenance and high energy outputs equals the energy of the future.…

    • 1020 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    INTRODUCTION Fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and gas have dominated and supplied most of the world’s energy needs for decades. As the dominant energy supply, it is not likely to be eliminated. It is thought to remain persistently in the environment for the next few generations. Fossil fuels have many long term consequences; for starters they are not a renewable source, thus they can deplete faster than they can be renewed. Not only are they exhaustible, they are a major threat to the environment; of particular concern is the threat towards the health of wildlife, ecosystems, environment, and human beings.…

    • 1932 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    • The wind energy depends on wind velocity. Wind velocities at different heights were expressed in terms of the corresponding available velocities at equal heights with and without reducer turbines. The results show that wind speed increases with reducer, starting with 1.35 times at the top of the reducer. The maximum increase is noticeable at about 300 slopes.…

    • 218 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    California Energy Benefits

    • 1311 Words
    • 6 Pages

    This wind power got converted into mechanical power, which used to produce Electricity. “People started using wind power centuries ago with windmills, which pumped water, ground grain, and did other work” (Hunter, 2011). In other words, the wind’s turbine uses the wind to generate electricity. Advantages of Alternative Energy Sources: • The main advantage of renewable sources of energy is that they are inexhaustible. This makes them sustainable and reliable now and in the future.…

    • 1311 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wind turbines are the opposite of fans, they create energy rather than use it. The wind turns the blades, which then spin a shaft, that then connects to a generator and that make the electricity 8. Choose one (economical or environmental) factors and list how you technical innovative design address this…

    • 560 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    When kinetic energy that is converted into mechanical power by wind the process is called wind energy. Wind energy has been around since the 5000 B.C. and was invented by China and Persia. It was used to propel boat across the Nile river. Also, wind energy is the fastest growing source of electricity in today's society. Finally, a single wind turbine can produce enough energy to power 500 houses.…

    • 312 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As the blades spin, a shaft inside of the turbine will also spin. This shaft spins into a generator, making energy. And guess what? Depending on the generator, wind energy can be either mechanical or electrical! (Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, 2014)…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wind Power Puffery

    • 299 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Summary for Burnett’s “Wind Power Puffery” As a costly power source in terms of both money and the environment, wind power has not lived up to its promises of achieving an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional power plants (Burnett 247-248). So argues H. Sterling Burnett in his article, “Wind Power Puffery.” He defends this argument with many specific examples, explaining that wind power falls short of other power sources primarily in that it only generates electricity when the wind moves within a specified range of velocities (247). When comparing wind power with a conventional power source, Burnett reveals that a wind farm is only able to produce a fraction of the power produced by a power plant in an equal duration of time…

    • 299 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Differential heating occurs when the earth leans and rotates around the sun that heats the globe year long. Because of so many changes of solar radiation, lower latitudes have more energy than the higher latitudes from the sun. Some locations on the same line of latitude will have different weather depending on how close or far they are to the oceans. Also lakes and rivers reduce the heat temperature because of the large amount of water they hold. When the atmosphere heats up it creates pressure, and different pressures create wind or breeze.…

    • 821 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Offshore Wind Farms

    • 165 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Wind is the second largest alternative energy source. The wind energy market is constantly growing, but it has many flaws that make it ineffective compared to nuclear power. Currently, the U.S. has 49,000 installed wind turbines. Each offshore wind turbine contains enough power to supply 400 homes, which means, if used correctly, can supply 1.96 million homes with power. Onshore wind farms are far less effective and have a maximum output of 300 homes per wind turbine.…

    • 165 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The demand for wind energy is increasing, so this means that the number of wind turbines needs to increase. The wind turbines are what produces the energy that comes from the wind rotating the wind turbines, without these there would be no way to capture the energy produced by the wind to use it at as the need arises. In the article “A…

    • 1705 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wind turbines operate on a simple principle; the force of the winds called “lift” pushes the blades of a wind turbine up, allowing it to turn the blades around a rotor. The rotor is connected to the main shaft which spins the gearbox whose gears convert the relatively slow rotation of the spinning blades into higher speed motion, turning the drive shaft quickly enough to power the electricity generator to create electricity. The rate of electricity currently being produced through wind energy in the United States is six million kilowatts an hour of power a year which is enough to power 1,500 households with electricity and that is just for an onshore wind turbine give source here. An offshore wind turbine produces an average amount of 3.6 Megawatts of power a year, this amount of power is enough to power 3,312 households with electricity.…

    • 1024 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Because their research and development covers so many fields, there technologies pay tribute to projects and technologies involving those fields. Innovations that can be used for mechanical parts in cars, electrical power delivery systems, and efficient structural design are all being complimented by wind technology [3]. Wind is also versatile. Some designs have solar cells which allows turbines to gather a large amount of power with a very small footprint, by gathering both wind and solar energy. There are other big innovations like smoke stack turbines which are turned from the smoke coming from power plants.…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wind Energy Dynamic

    • 1420 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Wind Energy and Dynamics Today many forms of energy exist that assist in creating power to be used on the industrial and commercial level, as well as power the many buildings that reside throughout the United States and the rest of the world. While there are an immense amount of methods that produce power/energy, one of the more recent developments pertains to that of wind energy. Wind energy is considered a renewable energy source because wind is always in supply, whereas fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum are non-renewable resources since it takes them many years to reform after extracting them from the earth.…

    • 1420 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    About 3% of the total electricity in the United States was generated by wind turbines in 2012, which is tantamount to the annual electricity use for about 12 million households. “The amount of electricity generated by wind has increased from about 6 billion kilowatt hours in 2000 to 140 billion kilowatt hours in 2012.” 2. Wind energy is a clean fuel source. It does not pollute the air like…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays