The wind turbine is a natural and efficient electricity production method. It generates energy that does not pollute the atmosphere and could save you money. Just as fossil fuel-powered electricity does, and depending on its size, it supplies electricity for domestic use and power to business offices using a Wind Farm. Since it is a better source of power, discovering how the wind turbine produces energy will help you maximize its use. This page will unravel that process for you right away.
What is a wind turbine and what is its composition
Before now, you used a windmill to produce power for your home or agricultural and other purposes. Today, that windmill has metamorphosed into the new wind turbine. A small turbine could supply electricity to your home, while a bigger one can serve businesses and other intensive energy users. When you have a collection of wind turbines serving larger purposes, they are known as wind farms.
Furthermore, you should know that the machine has three blades similar to those in a large industrial standing fan. Those blades are linked straight to a generator or a shaft with a gear. The wind turbine is normally painted white or silver gray and is nearly invincible in the surroundings.
How does a wind turbine function?
The wind keeps its fans turning, and the generator changes the wind energy into electrical power. You can make the fans faster by operating the gear. After producing the electricity, to make it usable by public consumers, you must use a transformer to step up the power to the exact voltage.
Next, you have to link to the national or state power grid that distributes the electricity to consumers’ homes, offices, industries, or farms. However, if you like, you can obtain a small wind turbine. It will generate enough power to heat your home, charge the phone, and cook your food.
Available kinds of wind turbines and where to locate them
The available kinds of turbines include horizontal Axis and Vertical Axis machines that work in slow or fast winds. Again, to boost the power generation capacity of wind turbines, you may install them on land, near mountains, or inside rivers or oceans. Those places give them unfettered access to the ocean or mountain breeze to produce electricity.
When you see the turbines on land, they are onshore. Small turbines could supply power of about a hundred kilowatts. Similarly, larger ones supply over that amount of power.
When, you build wind farms in water—oceans or rivers, then they are offshore. These turbines are usually gigantic. They produce power and transfer it to the nation’s power base for distribution to electricity consumers.
What is distributed wind?
Distributed means that the turbine is built close to the spot or compound where it produces electricity. This type of turbine generates power that is less than a hundred kilowatts.
They are known to serve various consumers and that includes home uses, and farms. They also serve business startups and industrial facilities.
History of the generation of power with wind turbine
In the US, a government website states that wind electricity generation has continued to rise over the years. The reason for the growth is the advancement in the technology used for generating wind power, leading to the lower installation cost.
The website equally traced the growth of the use of wind electricity to:
- disbursement of credit by the US Government to operators
- and provision of credit to operators by some other governments across the world.
For instance, the annual generation of power is put at nearly 6 billion kilowatt-hours in the year 2000, and at approximately 380 billion kilowatt-hours in 2021. The wind power electricity consumption amounted to 9.2% of the entire US power generation.
Do wind turbines pose a threat to birds?
A bird protection agency in the UK states that using renewable energy to lower greenhouse emissions is far safer for birds and humans. Besides, a website reported that in the US, wind turbines don’t threaten the bird population so much. Stating that there is more threat by cats to birds and birds that run into skyscrapers.
In addition, wind farm operators claim they are making efforts to ensure their machines are properly sighted, to prevent likely harm to birds. These operators affirm that they would continue to prevent accidents so that the number of birds in the environs keeps growing instead of being exterminated by the turbines.