Home | Technology | Alternate Energy Resources

Wind Power

By: Brad Noble

Read More About Alternate Energy Resources

There is a great deal of talk about being able to provide your own power for the home by building your own solar or wind power turbine from the readily available DIY kits. It may interest you to know that wind power is the fastest growing form of energy, with growth rates exceeding 25% per annum over the last 10 years.

Wind power is set to become an important means of generating electricity worldwide with it increasing in popularity as an energy source. Wind power is a clean energy source that can be relied on for the long-term future and is one of the cheapest and most environmentally friendly renewable sources of generating electricity.

The cost of Do It Yourself wind power holds tremendous potential and promise for those who like the hands on approach to creating their own energy and although it’s true there are disadvantages to wind power, the benefits and advantages for the home are much greater.

This section is quite technical but extremely interesting and explains why wind power is not as efficient as we are led to believe.

1. Not all of the 'kinetic energy' (power) of the wind can be harnessed because some of it will spill off the blades.

2. The maximum theoretical efficiency obtained by the blades is approximately 59% (for all you technical people this is the energy extracted divided by energy available in the captured wind area).

3. The maximum actual efficiency obtainable with a 'propeller type' windmill is much less than the theoretical coming in at 47%

4. Item 3 above is also dependant on the blade tip speed being 5-6 times the wind velocity.

5. For a given rotor speed, this velocity drops rapidly as the wind speed decreases.

This means that the maximum energy achieved by a rotor with a 30 meter diameter in a wind speed of 14 meters per second would be 690 kilowatts.


Here's where it gets very interesting because when the wind speed drops to 7 meters per second (50%) the power output drops to 86 kilowatts (88%) which is without doubt a serious disadvantage of wind power.

To put this into perspective, replacing a central power station with an output of one million kilowatts there would need to be more than 17,000 wind turbines installed.

Wind Power is presented as being efficient however; in light of the above you would need to question the viability of wind turbines in replacing a central main power station. Having a wind turbine in your own back yard to subsidise your power bills is somewhat different because it is a more viable as well as more practical solution.

Far fewer homes are suitable for personal wind turbines than homes that can accommodate solar panels but in certain cases, installing a wind turbine can be even better than installing solar panels because it can create a bigger mass of the energy required.

People trying to disconnect from commercial utility grids can (and do) erect turbines outside their homes to save money. Considering that the two most plentiful energy resources known to man, is solar energy and wind energy, it’s hardly surprising that homes and businesses can nowadays be powered solely in this manner.

Due to advances in wind power design and technology home wind power is a reality with small turbines now being used to power a single home or business having a capacity of less than 100 kilowatts, wind turbines of this size can also be installed on boats, RVs or caravans.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Wind power is not all it’s cracked up to be and is certainly not as efficient as we would like to believe. From a home situation there are some definite advantages in wind power and additional information can be found at www.solar-diy-power.info you will not be disappointed.

Please Rate this Article

 

Not yet Rated

Click the XML Icon Above to Receive Alternate Energy Resources Articles Via RSS!
Additional Articles From - Home | Technology | Alternate Energy Resources
Sign Up for a free account.
Our other websites
All about SEO
Beauty Tips Forum
Submit Articles
Member Login
Link Us
Submission Guidelines
Ezine Notifications
Article RSS Feeds
Sitemap
New Stuff
About Us
Developer
Good shopping portal
Link to Us
Contact Us
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service

counter easy hit

Powered by Article Dashboard