The prospect of using wind power is very seductive; but does it really work?
Well it certainly does, and has done for millennia. Wind has powered sailing vessels; it has also powered grain grinding mills. These became known as windmills. The wind has also been used to power water pumps — these were still called windmills but in reality wind pumps would have been a more accurate term.
More recently the wind has been used to drive turbines that produce electricity. Quite simply the wind, acting on the blades or sails of the turbine, causes the turbine to spin thus turning the shaft on which the blades or sails are mounted. The power of this spinning shaft is then used to drive an electric generator.
It is really a very simple process which can be adapted to drive small domestic wind power turbines through to huge commercial turbines.
Many people these days build their own wind turbines and in doing so save a considerable amount of money when compared with the commercial product. Many excellent guides are available on the Internet which take the do-it-yourself handyman through the process of building and installing domestic wind power. Read the rest of this entry »
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