Environmental Advantages Of Wind Energy

For many, the mention of wind energy conjures images of giant white turbines, their blades slowly rotating, stretching off into the distance with no end in sight. This is how it has been portrayed in pictures, but this is not how wind energy truly looks. Photographs in books and magazines imply that wind energy would require these never ending fields. On the contrary, smaller fields where a limited amount of turbines create all the power needed and more for a city that is nearby, or smaller individual turbines creating enough energy for a home or neighborhood without being obtrusive, is how wind energy truly looks. Wind energy harnesses the power of the wind and converts it to other forms of energy, one of the main known forms being electricity.

Wind is a form of solar energy so when it is used it creates electricity. Electricity is a physical phenomenon associated with fixed or moving electrons and protons. The wind power development was a step forward for the use of electricity on how to generate more electricity using the wind. The accomplishments for electricity is that Senegal used 10MW for a wind farm and they gave a positive report and is now using it since the second half of 2005. (Dodge) Another thing is during the Second World War; small wind generators were used on German U-boats to recharge submarine batteries as a fuel-conserving measure. The good thing about wind power is can produce electricity at night as well as during the day and that it is plentiful, renewable, and it reduces the greenhouse gas emissions. (ERIC) The Wind Power would be cheaper to develop electricity and it is less harm to our daily lives.

Wind is air in motion, and is caused by the uneven heating of the Earth’s surface by the sun (“Wind”). Because of this, wind energy has less impact on the environment then other energy sources. Therefore, wind can produce electricity through a turbine or windmill. A wind turbine is a device that converts kinetic energy from the wind into electrical power. (“Wind Turbine”) In order for a wind turbine to work there are many properties that must be present such as: wind, wind speed, location with the right wind, as well as other characteristics that come to play such as short and long term fluctuations and the distribution of wind direction.

Using wind to generate power is a clean alternative to using coal, oil, or other non-renewable resources. Since wind is clean, it doesn’t pollute the environment and doesn’t need any bad chemicals for power generation. The decision to use natural wind power over fossil fuels also reduces our country’s need to buy fossil fuels from other countries, and also the use of coal and oil from our own country. This helps to strengthen parts of our economy by using harnessing free resources for making our power (Rinkesh).

This webpage describes multiple advantages of wind power. It as well describes the challenges that come with wind power. It also describes how wind power is a clean, renewable source of

“A wind turbine is a machine for converting the kinetic energy in wind into mechanical energy”. (1) The inventor of the first electric wind turbine was Clevelander Charles Brush, who ran his entire Euclid Avenue mansion off of one for 20 years, which later made the cover of Scientific American in 1888. (2) Although the use of alternate energy didn't rise a great deal afterward, this event did open the eyes for many environmentalists. Wind power is only one of our several “energy source[s] whose ‘fuel’ is free and will never be exhausted” (3) with the pros and cons not completely weighed out as to whether it will be truly beneficial or not. The two main issues regarding wind turbines are the environmental effects that they have and the

Wind power captures natural wind and converts it into mechanical energy and then electricity. Wind energy is the fastest growing energy source in the world; aiming to produce 20% of its electricity by wind power by 2030. We started using wind power centuries ago with windmills, they pumped water, grounded grain and so much more. Wind turbines today are a much more evolved version of a windmill. They range in size at 80 feet tall and can power a single home. And a utility scale turbine can power hundreds of homes. It is a renewable, clean source of energy that doesn’t generate any greenhouse gases. It can possibly improve (or not) our lives at home and work.

Wind turbines are recognized as one of the fasted growing renewable energy and very sustainable for the environment but it also has its own advantages and disadvantages. They are as follow:

For years the United States has been searching for an efficient form of clean energy. Wind energy has the potential to become the base of sustainable energy for America’s future. Although there are a few disadvantages to wind energy, the protection it offers along with the economical and environmental advantages provide many reasons to use more wind energy and less coal and fossil fuels in America.

Although the use of wind energy backs to more than hundreds of years (the wind wheel of Heron of Alexandria in the first century AD is the earliest known instance of using a wind-driven wheel to power a machine (Drachmann, 1961; Lohrmann, 1995)), it is yet an immature and growing technology. In recent years, coastal and offshore wind turbines are growing fast, as an attractive means for clean energy production. Due to the nature of the wind in offshore regions, that are powerful and more uniform than inland winds, offshore wind turbines can produce energy effectively (Musial and Butterfield, 2006). It should be noted that the extracted energy is proportional to the cubic of the wind speed which means an increase in wind speed has a significant influence on the amount of produced energy. In addition, it is more cost effective to place

Fossil fuels are having great impacts toward nature such as global warming and greenhouse effect. Plus, the depletion of it contributes to the rising price of petroleum. Therefore, wind power rise as it is a source of clean, non-polluting renewable energy (Nash, 2008). This type of energy generation provides us with loads of benefits environmentally and economically.

In addition to being a virtually inexhaustible renewable resource, wind energy has the advantage of being modular; that is a wind farm’s size can be adjusted by simply adjusting the number of turbines on the farm. A major disadvantage of wind is that the amount of energy available from the generator at any given time is dependent on the intensity of the wind resource at the time which is very difficult to predict. This intermittency of intensity reduces the wind generator’s value both at the operational level and also at the system capacity planning level where the system planner needs information about how much energy they can depend on from a generator at a future planning date, i.e., when the wind intensity cannot be perfectly predicted. Another disadvantage of wind energy is that good wind sites tend to be located far from main load centers and transmission lines. Concerns have also been raised about the death of birds and bats flying into wind turbines, the possibility of turbines causing radar interference, and potential adverse effects of the shadow flicker5 on people living in close proximity.

Now-a-days the handling of “Electricity” has been increased rapidly. Due to this the “Fossil Fuels” are getting extinguished day-to-day. So we need to choose for an alternate source of energy that is Renewable Source. Among the Renewable Sources “Wind Energy” is one of them.

Wind is a clean, powerful renewable energy source which can be used to convert the mechanical energy into electrical energy. Wind power uses large wind turbines rotated by air flow in turn rotates power generators to generate electricity. Many individual wind turbines can be connected to an electrical grid to transmit the power. Wind is an inexhaustible energy resource and environmental friendly compared to fossil fuel which has disastrous effects and finite [2].

Rapid consumption of non renewable fossil fuels as sources of energy has lead to depletion of these resources. So the price of petroleum resource has increased in the international market. A growing concern over their environmental effects has lead to research and development in the area of renewable energy to find an alternative source of energy for future. Wind energy which possesses the highest power density amongst various renewable energy sources, is one such source. [27].