A look at wind-powered sources of electricity and their use as a renewable resource.
This paper looks at the history of wind turbine technology and the current mechanisms by which modern wind turbine energy plants are run. The paper considers the future of this form of energy and argues that wind generators will need serious technological innovation if they are to serve as a source of electrical power for independent facilities or communities without any recourse to fossil fuels or nuclear energy. The paper does suggest, however, a seasonal rotation of renewable energy sources that includes wind power.
“Potential sources of renewable energy are often difficult to develop, due in large part to the lack of research funding, but also due to the momentum that the traditional energy economy has. Petrochemicals and coal have been used to produce light and energy for over a century in Europe and the United States, and it is only relatively recently that the perpetual availability world’s supply of fossil fuels was seriously questioned. The emergence of alternative energy sources – solar, geothermal, wind, and nuclear fission – has not yet caught up to our constant depletion of fossil fuel resources (Gipe, 184). So far, wind power has come out ahead in the race to replace fossil fuels as a large-scale source of power. No other alternative energy source uses such simple, inexpensive technology to produce energy equivalent to a small power plant. Unfortunately, the geographic locations of wind turbine farms must be very specific, in order to take advantage of the most powerful and consistent winds. Meteorologically, wind power is not as consistent as fossil fuel power, and its input is determined in part by geophysical variables, and in part by seasonal variables (AWEA, 1).”