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Essay on The Importance of Wind Turbines for Renewable Energy

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The American inventor Charles F. Brush invented the first automatically operated wind turbine in 1887. [1] Since then, multiple developments have contributed to the design of today’s modern wind turbine. And when grouped together into a wind farm, wind turbines are becoming an important source of renewable energy.

HAWT blades are designed like airplane wings in order to use lift to capture the wind’s energy. The airfoil design that they use makes one surface of the blade rounded, while the other is smooth and flat. [3] When air passes through the blades, a difference in pressure is created between the top and bottom of the blade. The introduction of the blade into airflow acts like an introduction of a force and causes the streamlines of …show more content…

The main purpose of the gearbox is to increase the rotational speed of the blades to the generator. In order for the electrical generator to perform efficiently and effectively, the input speed must be very fast. The blades are not able to turn fast enough due to the centrifugal strain of high speeds. [6] The gearbox uses multiple gears and gear trains in order to provide speed and torque conversions that are necessary. These conversions are dependent on the gear ratio of the gearbox.

Most of the mechanical energy that is produced by the rotating blades is transformed into electrical energy via the generator. The generator, through the process of electromagnetic induction, produces an electrical voltage that will cause a current to flow out of the generator. As the rotor spins the shaft, the shaft spins the coil of wire held within the generator. The coil is surrounded by an assembly of permanent magnets that produce a voltage when the coil is spun inside of them. [7] This voltage is what drives the electrical current through the power lines for distribution.

The yaw controller is responsible for controlling the angle between the rotor and direction of wind (yaw angle). Varying wind direction becomes an issue for the power-generating abilities of turbines. In order for the turbine to produce the most power, the turbine’s horizontal axis must be parallel to the wind direction. The yaw controller is able to turn the

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