Distance Learning School

Logs, Wind and Sun: Handcraft Your Own Log Home ... Then Power It with Nature

Overall Rating:

Retail Price: $28.95

Amazon Price: $59.00

Wind can be an awesome force of nature, just ask anyone who has been in a tornado or powerful hurricane. We can harness this wind for the use of generating electricity for our world. When the sun shines it heats the earth, but since the earth is made of different materials and is of differing heights and valleys it heats unevenly, especially over land and water.

Daytime is when the air above the land heats up more quickly, and it heats the air over water more slowly. Warm air that is above the land expands and rises, and cooler air quickly comes in to fill the gaps, and this creates wind. In the evening, the winds reverse, because air cools more quickly over land than over water. This is why you have the differing temperatures of land near bodies of water.

Today as we look for new ways to power the earth, it is a natural thing to look at wind power. It has been used for many years to power simple machines of the past. Wind is another type of solar energy, which makes it a renewable energy source. In years past we used windmills, the wind machines of today are called turbines.

Much like the old fashioned windmills, the wind machines we use today use blades to collect the wind’s energy. Windmills work because they harness the power of the wind to generate electricity. Even the new wind machines must have wind to work, so when the wind isn’t blowing other types of power have to be used, like solar panel energy.

The turbines used today are based on the direction of the rotating shaft for example; one type is a horizontal axis wind machine, and the other is a vertical axis wind machine. Wind machines (turbines) come in different sizes depending on the amount of electricity that they need to generate. There are small turbines used for homes and businesses, and they will have a capacity of less than 100 kilowatts. The larger sized turbines have a capacity of 5 million watts, or even as high as 5 megawatts these are used for commercial purposes. The large turbines can be used to make up wind farms that provide power to a large electrical grid.

Most turbines used today are the horizontal axis type. The horizontal axis turbines have blades that are made like airplane propellers. A horizontal wind machine will typically stand about as tall as a 20-story building and has three blades that can span as much as 200 feet across. The largest turbines in the world actually have blades that are longer than a football field. Wind Turbines are built to stand tall and wide to capture more wind effectively.

Critics of electric wind power point out that the windmills which are essential to power generation are extremely large and make a lot of noise. Ordinarily, they can only be used in rural areas, where the open spaces and elevated terrain essential for their use can be found. Because of these limitations, they are not usually practical for more densely populated areas.

Is wind power the way for everyone to be power self sufficient? Many parts of the world have sufficient consistent wind to make sufficient electricity to serve everyones requirements.