|
|
|
|
|
We have been harnessing the wind's energy for hundreds of years. Today, the windmill's modern equivalent - a wind turbine - can use the wind's energy to generate electricity.
Wind turbines, like windmills, are mounted on a tower to capture the most energy. At 100 feet (30 meters) or more aboveground, they can take advantage of the faster and less turbulent wind. Turbines catch the wind's energy with their propeller-like blades. Usually, two or three blades are mounted on a shaft to form a rotor.
Wind turbines can be used as stand-alone applications, or they can be connected to a utility power grid or even combined with a photovoltaic (solar cell) system. For utility-scale sources of wind energy, a large number of wind turbines are usually built close together to form a wind plant. Several electricity providers today use wind plants to supply power to their customers.
Stand-alone wind turbines are typically used for water pumping or communications. However, homeowners, farmers, and ranchers in windy areas can also use wind turbines as a way to cut their electric bills.
Call one of our experienced wind turbine design techs to talk about your project. If you have your most recent electric bill handy, we'll be able to get started with the design process right away.
As in most other areas of power production, when it comes to capturing energy from the wind, efficiency comes in large numbers. Groups of large turbines, called wind farms or wind plants, are the most cost-efficient use of wind-energy capacity. The most common utility-scale wind turbines have power capacities between 700 KW and 1.8 MW, and they're grouped together to get the most electricity out of the wind resources available.
On the economic front, there is a lot of good news for wind energy. First, a wind plant is far less expensive to construct than a conventional energy plant. Wind plants can simply add wind machines as electricity demand increases.
Second, the cost of producing electricity from the wind has dropped dramatically in the last two decades.
Wind energy is clean. Wind machines produce no air or water pollution because no fuel is burned to generate electricity.
Electricity generated by the wind cost 30 cents per kWh in 1975, but now costs less than five cents per kWh. In comparison, new coal plants produce electricity at four cents per kWh.
|
|
