How is the energy wind power generated?

5 Comments

1. Brian T says:

   November 7, 2009 at 9:31 pm

   Just like Thomas Edison did it. Moving coils going through magnetic fields. OR moving magnets going through coils. The windmills usually travel slowly so there is a transmission that speeds up the shaft speed.
   There are many different generating scemes but all involve systems that put 60 cycle power (most at 3 phase) back into the power lines. There are systems that shut down the windmills and face them correctly when the wind speed exceeds the design speeds for the turbines.
2. biire2u says:

   November 7, 2009 at 9:31 pm

   Wind blows on usually a 3 blade design that is angled with a small angle perpendicular to the wind direction.

   The blades change the direction of the wind and in doing so they extract energy from the wind energy. If the wind comes in at 15 m/s it might leave the blades at 10 m/s. That 5 m/s of wind energy is converted into rotational motion of the blades which are connected to a generator shaft.

   The area of the circle that the blades travels in is the theoretical power the blades can extract from the wind. For instance, if the blades are 30 meters in diameter the area swept by the blades is area = pi * r^2, so area = 3.14 * 15 squared = 707 square meters of area

   So if you take all the wind power of moving air traveling thru an area ,that is 707 square meters in this case, and the blades job is to grab as much of this energy in the 707 sq m as possible and convert it to rotational motion which can then turn a generator. A spinning generator makes AC electric current

   In theory , a windmill can only convert a little less than 60% of the wind energy into electricity, because once the wind goes thru the blades it has to have enough energy to get out of the way to let new wind energy come into the blades
3. Bardia says:

   November 7, 2009 at 9:31 pm

   Wind -> wind Turbine -> mechanical -> Electrical
4. Mya says:

   November 7, 2009 at 9:31 pm

   Wind machines (also called wind turbines) use blades to collect the wind’s kinetic energy. The wind flows over the blades creating lift, like the effect on airplane wings, which causes them to turn. The blades are connected to a drive shaft that turns an electric generator to produce electricity.
5. Don says:

   November 7, 2009 at 9:31 pm

   wind turbines are machines that rotate whenever the force of the wind blows by it. It transforms kinetic energy into mechanical energy. The latter is then converted into electricity. The power generated is dependent of the actual wind power. The stronger the wind, the more power is produced. The wind is a very good source of power as it is available all the time. It replenishes very quickly.