Wind Power Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Wind Power - Essay Example World is facing major energy crisis due to the pollution attached to the presently available energy sources and technology. The commitment to develop clean energy sources is forcing economies to develop sustainable and clean power generation. Wind energy is a major source of clean power. It is important to mainstream this source of power as a clean alternative to support the power requirements. Use of wind as a reliable source of energy for various purposes like navigation, pumping water, grinding grains, sawing etc. is evident from the historical times. Wind is one of the cleanest sources of energy available in the world. The science of power generation from wind is rather simple. Earth is made of different materials, distributed unevenly all over the space and hence it absorbs heat from the sun with variance. During day, air over the land surface gets heated quickly than the air above water surface. Heating causes expansion of air and hence it becomes lighter and moves upwards and the heaver air replaces it causing wind. The process is reversed during night time, as air over the land surface gets cool quickly than the air above water surface. In simple words, wind is generated by movement of air between high pressure to low pressure area. In terms of energy flow, heat energy is converted into kinetic energy. Production of power from wind energy is quite interesti... Production of power from wind energy is quite interesting and it follows basic principles of energy conversion. Power is generated when the kinetic energy of the wind is converted to mechanical energy. This power could be used for generating electricity or power for running machines etc. Hence, wind power could be used for many purposes. The present day wind machines uses blades to collect the kinetic energy from the wind. When wind strikes the blades of the machines, it slow down the wind by capturing its energy and thus allows the blades to rotate. These blades are connected to a shaft at the centre which transfers its power to the electric generator to produce electricity. The interesting part is that in the entire process, there is no pollution involves with the process. Wind power is a potential form of renewable energy which is available to humankind. Although it has a long history, this source of energy is not mainstreamed due to lack of improved technology and huge production cost. Although developed much earlier, cheaper technologies were developed for power generation from alternate sources which alienated the use of wind power for commercial purposes. The cost factor had impacted this majorly. The major constrain of the wind power is the reliability factor as the power is generated only when there is wind. During lean period, one has to depend on other sources for power supply. This drawback makes it difficult for people to adopt this technology for daily use. The only alternative for this problem is to use other sources of power for the lean period. In the present scenario, energy is produced in the world from coal, crude oil, petroleum products, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, combustible renewables & waste etc. Most of these sources are