Wind Power : Turbine Energy For A Home Or Business

If you’ve ever traveled through the European countryside, you’ll see the first relics of the human capacity to harness wind power. Old windmills are a staple not only on Old Dutch chip bags, but also all over Europe. The people who built those windmills would be shocked and awed to see how windmills have evolved and how wind power is harnessed today. They are much sleeker, larger and efficient than the rickety wooden mills of the past. Wind energy has been taken to the next level, and will hopefully pay a big part in fuelling our future.

Energy for the Future

Although wind power is not particularly popular world wide, and only produces 1% of our total energy consumption, in some countries it is especially popular. For example, Denmark gets 20% of its electricity from wind turbines. In North America, this is far less of a reality, but the possibilities are incredibly promising. Wind energy is obviously plentiful, arguably more so than even solar energy because it is less affected by the time of day and season. It is also renewable, distributed widely, clean, and if used widely will decrease carbon emissions and lessen the threat of global warming. For these and other reasons, wind technology’s popularity is growing.

wind power

"Globally, between 2000 and 2006 the use of wind power generation has quadrupled."

wind power and energy

The newest wind technology (wind turbines) that is most commonly used to convert wind into electricity is also fairly simple. The rotation of the blades of the wind turbine is converted into electrical current with the use of an electrical generator. Unlike the windmills of the past, which used the wind to turn mechanical machinery to do physical labour like crushing grain or pumping water, wind turbines produce electricity that can be used for a far wider range of tasks. On the wider scale of energy production, wind turbines are used in wind farming which supplies electricity to a country’s national electrical grid. Small individual turbines are also commonly used by rural farmers and residents to power their homes, especially for those who live too far from the nearest electrical grid.