Electricity
Popularity of Wind Energy Growing
Wind energy is nothing new for those of us who grew up in the plains of West Texas. The wind created massive dust storms and powered windmills for smaller scale farms and homes. However, until recently we did not harness all of that wind energy to power city homes and businesses.
With the recent increases in oil prices in the United States and around the world, harnessing wind energy is becoming a national obsession. Wind farms are springing up across western Texas, New Mexico and up into the Great Plains, as the people who have suffered and complained about all those windy days find a way to make money from all the energy that wind provides.
All that wind energy has always been renewable and cleaner to produce than energy from oil and coal. Now that it’s becoming worth the cost of production, people are quickly realizing the benefits of using cleaner wind energy to power their homes and businesses. Since wind energy can be converted to electricity, it can fill a variety of needs in cities as well as on farms.
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Wind Energy and You
In a day and time when our dependency on fossil fuels is at an all time high and in particular foreign fossil fuels, it only makes sense for us to explore other options for electricity. One of the ways that we can begin to help our country lessen its dependency on fossil fuels is to begin using more clean energy or “green energy” like wind energy. In this article, we will talk about the ways that you can use wind energy to benefit you and at the same time, it will benefit your environment.
There are two ways that you can use wind energy to benefit you, the first way I will discuss is the stand-alone system.
A stand-alone system means that wind energy is your only source of power. When people use this type of system it is usually backed up by solar power. On days when there is not much wind, then the solar system will help to supplement the power that you require to run your home. The benefit to using the stand-alone system is two fold. One you are not using fossil fuels to power your home and two, you do not have an electric bill to contend with, buy using a stand alone system with wind energy being your primary source of power, you will be able to pay for your system in utility cost savings in a short period of time.
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Wind turbines provide a good energy alternative to fossil fuels
Electricity is created from kinetic energy, that is the energy created by movement. The object that performs this movement and thus creates the kinetic energy that is converted is the turbine. The most popular way to turn the turbine is to boil water, which in turn creates steam and heat energy that turns the turbine, creating the kinetic energy that is then converted into electric energy. Here’s where green house gases kick in.
Though it’s the steam that’s turning the turbine, the water is boiled using coal or natural gas, which release the dangerous emissions known as green house gas. But there are more environmentally friendly ways to turn that turbine and create the kinetic energy necessary to create electricity, like wind.
Wind energy operates on a simple system that is none the less quite effective. The turbine used to convert kinetic energy to electrical energy is housed inside a wind mill like structure known as a “wind turbine”. When the wind picks up the wind turbine spins, creating kinetic energy. This energy is then converted into electricity through the use of copper wires and magnets. Just one wind turbine can generate enough energy to fuel a single house. As such, there are usually many wind turbines on a single stretch of land, also known as a wind farm. The best part is, since wind turbines gain the kinetic energy necessary for electricity from the wind, there’s no need to burn coal or gas to create power. The result is a pollution and green house gas free source of energy.
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