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Wind Power (1) One of the reasons why our civilization was able to progress technologically is because people strived to adjust surrounding reality to their own needs. Harvesting wind can serve as the best example of human ingenuity. It is impossible to say now when people first thought of using wind power. There are historical accounts of boats being equipped with sails that date as far back as 1000 B.
C. Up until the middle of 19 th century; naval ships were being powered by wind. The first reports of windmills utilized for pumping water and for grounding flour date back to 10 th century A. D. By this time, windmills were being widely used in Holland and Sweden. A few centuries later, the wind harvesting technology became spread all over the Europe.
Nevertheless, it was not up until the discovery of electricity that people were able to realize that this technology could also be exploited for generating electrical power. Will Reece in his article The History of Wind Generated Power traces the building of first electrical windmill to Cleveland, Ohio: In the late 19 th Century, the first windmill to generate electricity was born! This was the Brush post mill in Cleveland Ohio, and the year was 1888! The rotor was approximately 17 meters in diameter. This windmill had a gearbox with a high spin ratio attached to a DC generator (Reece).
By 1930, a few electricity generating windmills, located in Midwestern plains, were being first used on commercial basis. The electrical output of these mills was comparatively low, by modern standards; however, they were still able to provide neighboring farms with electrical power. By 1941 engineers came to conclusion that, in order to make wind harvesting truly effective, a new organizing approach would have to be used. Thus, the concept of wind farm was born.
Wind farm is a concentration of wind turbines, from just a few to hundreds that feed electricity directly into the supply network. Same year marks the time when the first commercially effective wind generator was being designed. It had the capacity of 1. 15 megawatts. Nevertheless, only in seventies many nations began to consider wind harvesting as an alternative source of energy.
This came as the result of realization that non-renewable sources of energy, such as oil and coal, will not last for much longer. Denmark is leading the way, in this respect. The share of wind generated electricity in this country amounts to 5 %, but what is truly remarkable is that Denmark plans to increase this share to 40 % by 2030. Other countries, such as China, India and Australia, are also planning to gradually increase the amount of produced wind electricity.
In his article Germans Blow Hot and Cold About Use of Wind Power Douglas Sutton tells us that Germany is about to overtake the lead in providing economic stimulus for the development of wind farming industry: Since a federal law in 1991 began providing financial incentives to wind-generated power, Germany's installed wind capacity has jumped to 643 megawatts from just about 50 megawatts (Sutton). Nevertheless, it is the U. S. , which remains the largest producer of wind generated electricity per capita. Up until recently, American designed wind turbines used to be referred to as the most effective. Unfortunately, we are now behind European countries in this respect. Economists predict that the amount of investments into this comparatively new industry will grow continuously, because technological progress will allow wind farmers to increase the commercial profitability of their wind towers.
The ongoing research into the alternative sources of energy has not yielded any concrete results, so far. However, wind, as the source of energy, has been exploited for thousands of years, without having its potential even slightly depleted. Given the fact that Earth is already becoming overpopulated, we cannot seriously suggest that there is going to be enough natural resources to provide everybody with comfortable living for much longer. There is simply not enough room under the sun for all.
Many political observers suggest that current socio-political dynamics will result in creation of situation when only citizens of very few countries are going to be able to enjoy the spoils of Western civilization in the future. These countries are going to be separated from the rest of the world and demographic situation in them is going to be placed under strict governmental control. The population of these countries will consist of only rich people, who would not tolerate an environmental pollution, caused by the conventional producers of energy. Therefore, wind harvesting, along with collecting a solar power, might just become the main source of energy in the world. (2) There are many advantages of wind harvesting over traditional ways of generating energy.
First of all, it is inexhaustible. We can never run of wind, unless Earth climate undergoes some dramatic change. Even if it happens, it is much more probable that weather is going to become windier, as the result. There are many places on this planet where winds blow constantly.
Basically, wind is nothing but a pure kinetic energy. This point out to another important advantage of wind generated electricity it allows us to eliminate intermediate stages of producing power, which are very costly. For example, the traditional coal plant needs to transform coals potential energy into the heat first. After this, heat needs to be transformed into the kinetic energy. This is done by heating up water for the purpose of obtaining steam. In its turn, steam rotates electric turbine, which leads to generating the electricity.
Therefore, it does not take an engineer to realize that this method of producing electricity cannot be very effective in principle, because a large amount of energy, which could have been transformed into electricity, simply gets wasted. The process of obtaining electricity from wind does not cause harm to nature. It does not even affect nature in the way hydro-electrical plants do. We can say that wind farms actually reduce the amount entropy in the world by giving chaotic kinetic energy a structural ized form.
Therefore, the impact of wind harvesting industry on the environment is opposite to the impact of conventional power plants. This is because the operating principles of wind farm and coal plant, for example, are fundamentally different. According to the laws of Physics, energy never disappears but changes its form. After having produced some work, energy transforms into the heat. This is nothing but the form of entropy. In its turn, entropy is the absence of order; therefore, entropy can only affect us negatively.
Global warming is one of the effects of an increased amount of entropy in our world. This is why we cannot think about coal plant as the integral detail of the landscape. Wind towers, on the other hand, fit perfectly into the landscape. They cause the same effect on people as waterfalls or mountains the view of rotating rotor blades is soothing. Many people are known to be taking trips over to the wind farms because they consider them worthy of sightseeing. Wind harvesting is comparatively simple.
It does not involve a complicated technological process that we associate with conventional ways of generating energy. Basically, anyone can become a wind farmer. The remote communities are especially interested in developing wind farming. Lester Brown in his article Wind Energy Demand Booming says: Interest in wind energy is rising as production costs fall. Although media attention focuses on communities with a not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) response to wind turbines, such as the large, off-shore wind farm planned off Cape Cod, in most of the country wind farms are enthusiastically welcomed.
Here, its the PIIMBY syndrome put-it-in-my-backyard (Brown). In fact, in many remote areas of U. S. and Canada, wind electricity is becoming the option of choice, because it has proven to be much more cost effective, in the long run. Article Wind Energy that can be found on the site of Natural Resources Canada leaves no doubt that wind farming is going to become more widespread, as time goes by: In remote areas, generating electricity with diesel generators can range from $ 0. 25 to $ 1. 00 per kilowatt hour. So in good wind areas, electricity that is generated by the wind is clearly cost effective.
When compared to the money that is charged by electrical companies, wind energy costs are nearly competitive (Natural Resources Canada). What is especially appealing about wind harvesting is that it allows the land with windmills to be used for agricultural purposes. Farmers can actually combine generating electrical power with tending crops. This significantly increases the commercial effectiveness of their enterprise. Thus, the actual cost of wind generated energy in rural areas is going to be even lower than the initial estimates might indicate. (3) Wind harvesting also has numerous drawbacks, which prevented it from becoming universally accepted, as alternative source of energy.
The most obvious one is the fact that wind can be erratic, changing direction by the hour. Even in Great Plains, there can be absolutely windless days, as practice shows. This significantly reduces the dependability of this source of energy. Partially, this problem has been solved by mounting wind turbines 40 - 50 meters high, because wind slows down, as the result of its friction against land. This simple trick allows a minimal amount of electrical power to be produced even on most quiet days.
Some meteorologists suggest that wind can be induced artificially. One of the reasons why meteorology is unable to come up with accurate extended weather forecasts is because the wind patterns change chaotically. Apparently, even a seemingly insignificant meteorological event, can influence weather over large areas. As...
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Research essay sample on 19 Th Century Source Of Energy
