Wind Power - An Important Renewable Resource

Wind Power - An Important Renewable Resource

Winds are a powerful force of nature. Although unseen, winds can blow up to several hundreds of miles per hour at a constant speed. Because of such immense force, they have become one of the top prospects as a renewable energy source. But before you go and find out more about the huge potential that is in wind energy, it would be very helpful to know about the processes behind the formation of winds in the atmosphere first.

Winds are generally brought about by the unequal heating of earth's surface by the sun. Aside from that, different terrains in the globe have different heating properties as well. Land generally heats much faster than water surfaces which lead to continents increasing their temperatures at a faster speed than the oceans. During the day, warm air over the continents become lighter and they float up to the atmosphere. The void space is then replaced by cold air from the upper part of the air column, thus creating moving bodies of air called wind. Come night time, as water surfaces cools more rapidly, wind directions become reversed.

Because of this immense mechanical movement, people have now found a way to harness such of nature's force and turn it to usable form through electricity through the use of wind turbines. Wind energy are also considered a good alternative to fossil fuel based energy because they are renewable (winds are always present as long as the natural processes in the earth's atmosphere are unhindered) and because they do not emit any kind of carbon emissions into the air - which is one of the major culprits for global warming and the destruction of our environment.

As mentioned before, the power of the wind can be harvested and turned to electrical energy through the use of wind turbines (more commonly known in the past as windmills). Wind turbines look very much the same as the usual windmills but they now come with various electrical circuits and machineries that can turn the wind's mechanical energy into stored electricity and can power houses and entire communities. Strong winds flowing over the blades cause them to turn along with the shaft. The mechanical movement will be directed towards a generator turning this raw kind of energy to usable electrical energy.

But still, there are many challenges to wind turbine construction, mostly due to the many variable properties of this force of nature - from varying wind speeds to unpredictable directions. But wind turbine construction are considered to be a work in progress as existing researches are at work, geared to create better designs that answer to the problem of variability in wind speed and direction. Aside from that, better construction designs of entire large scale wind farms are being developed as well.

As of 2008, it was reported that about 1.3% of the total electricity generated in the United States are from wind powered plants - generating about 52 billion kilowatt hours of electricity for that year and providing electricity to 4.6 households in the country. Although this is a very small fraction, new developments and researches geared to improve this kind of renewable energy are showing great signs of expansion.

But one of the down sides to wind generated electricity is the high cost of constructing wind turbines. The initial investment that it takes to start out an actual wind farm is very costly and is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to its full use. Eighty percent of the entire cost is allotted for the construction of the machinery and the rest are allotted to preparation and the site construction itself.

Aside from that, wind powered turbines also has its own environmental issues as well. The noise created by the turning of the turbines can be considered pollution in itself. An increase in the mortality rate of flying animals were also reported in sites where there are wind turbines. And finally, towering wind turbines are also considered to be visual pollution for many. But this is an issue can easily be resolved through better and more thorough site selection processes - by choosing sites away from residential and inhabited areas, sometimes even shallow parts of the seas.

There is still a lot to learn and improve about in this kind of renewable energy resource. But the good news is that there are a number of private and government funded researches that are aimed for the development and construction of wind turbines as an alternative source of energy - all to power cities and even possibly, entire countries in the future.

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