Wind energy is the fastest growing renewable energy source in the world. The technology is now seen as having so many advantages that in Europe and the United States, wind-powered generating capacity increased by 18 percent and 27 percent, respectively, in 2005 alone.
Foremost of those advantages; it is a clean source of electricity produced when specially designed wind turbines capture the wind to generate electricity. In the same way as historical windmills, modern wind turbines generate power from the wind. The latest technology produces wind energy reliably and efficiently. Unlike other power plants, wind energy systems require minimal maintenance and have low operating expenses.
Wind energy is, in fact, a method by which solar energy is converted into electrical power. The sun's radiation heats different parts of the earth at different rates - most notably during the day and night, but also when different surfaces (for example, water and land,) absorb or reflect at different rates. That creates the winds that wind turbines use to create electricity, and the electricity they produce is generated right up on the mast behind the turbine blades. A simple cable then conducts the power into the electrical power grid
Wind is a clean fuel; wind farms produce no air or water pollution because no fuel is burned. This means that wind energy is also a source of clean, green non-polluting, electricity. Unlike conventional power plants which burn carbonaceous fuels, wind plants emit no air pollutants or greenhouse gases.
Wind energy is one of the cheapest of the renewable energy technologies. It is competitive with new clean coal fired power stations and cheaper than new nuclear power. Small wonder then that wind energy is the leading renewable energy technology.
It can be developed much further and given the right support it could provide up to 28% of EU electricity by 2030. Wind energy is popular as well. Dozens of surveys have been conducted in the U.S. that have shown its popularity. One reason why it is popular, especially in remote windy areas, is partly due to the fact that wind energy creates 27 percent more jobs than advanced coal technology and twenty times more jobs than natural gas combined cycle.
Wind energy is plentiful in most parts of the world, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by displacing fossil-fuel-derived electricity. Therefore, it is considered by experts to be more environmentally friendly than most other energy sources. Wind energy is also a permanently available form of energy. The wind will exist for as long as the sun exists, which is roughly another four billion years!
Wind energy is clean energy. Unlike coal or natural gas, every kilowatt-hour of wind energy is free of the toxic emissions that pollute our air and water.
Wind energy is one of the fastest-growing forms of electricity generation in the world. The United States can currently generate more than 10,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity from the wind, which is enough to power 2.5 million average American homes. Wind energy is a pollution-free, infinitely sustainable form of energy. It doesnâEUR(TM)t use fuel; it doesnâEUR(TM)t produce greenhouse gases once built, and it doesnâEUR(TM)t produce toxic or radioactive waste.
Wind energy tends to be available in winter when power is needed and is available overnight, when solar energy is unable to provide direct power.
However, wind energy is not immune from disadvantages.
This form of energy is intermittent at any one site, and can only be generated when wind velocities are within a certain range. During high winds which would possibly damage the turbine blades the turbine is stopped and automatically furled, and when wind velocities are too low they can obviously not provide power either.
This means that there will always need to be backup fossil fuel power stations which the generating company will need to hold in readiness for windless days, and providing these plants will be very expensive.
Some say that if the power grid extends across several nations there will always be somewhere that is windy enough to be generating power at any time. However, they tend to forget that there are energy losses in the power distribution lines which eventually, across large distances, render such large distribution distances uneconomic.
Therefore, as the proportion of wind energy supplying national grid systems increases, power engineers will face an ever increasing challenge to balance the power across the system and provide all their users with a dependable continuous supply on airless and calm days. It is not clear how that can be achieved once the proportion of wind energy rises above a certain threshold.
There are many other disadvantages of wind power, which are less important, but nevertheless of great concern to those which will need to accommodate wind turbines as their close neighbors.
Modern windmills are not devoid of environmental impacts upon their localities and the most important of these can be listed as:-
- turbine blade noise
- potential for disturbance to wildlife and a hazard to flying birds which may be hit by the blades
- visual intrusion, especially since the highest winds are usually found in some of the most remote, beautiful and most unspoilt places around the world.
Nevertheless, in more than 50 countries the locals are clearly being willing to reduce as far as possible these impacts by careful site selection and turbine design. Then they are coming to terms with those disadvantages which remain, to help their nations maintain power supplies against rising oil price rises, and do this in a renewable way, at low cost, and with very low greenhouse gas emissions.
For this reason we say that all of us must expect to see more and more wind farms being built right across the countryside and out at sea as well.
