Wind

Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into useful form, such as electricity, using wind turbines. In windmills, wind energy is directly used to crush grain or to pump water. At the end of 2007, worldwide capacity of wind-powered generators was 94.1 gigawatts. more...

Home
Antiquities
Architectural & Garden
Asian Antiques
Books, Manuscripts
Decorative Arts
Ethnographic
Furniture
Maps, Atlases, Globes
Maritime
Musical Instruments
Keyboard
Percussion
String
Wind
Other Antiques
Primitives
Rugs, Carpets
Science & Medicine
Silver
Textiles, Linens

Although wind currently produces just over 1% of world-wide electricity use, it accounts for approximately 19% of electricity production in Denmark, 9% in Spain and Portugal, and 6% in Germany and the Republic of Ireland (2007 data). Globally, wind power generation increased more than fivefold between 2000 and 2007.

Wind power is produced in large scale wind farms connected to electrical grids, as well as in individual turbines for providing electricity to isolated locations.

Wind energy is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions when it displaces fossil-fuel-derived electricity. The intermittency of wind seldom creates insurmountable problems when using wind power to supply a low proportion of total demand, but it presents extra costs when wind is to be used for a large fraction of demand.

History

The earliest historical reference describes a windmill used to power an organ in the 1st century AD. Windmills were used extensively in Northwestern Europe to grind flour beginning in the 1180s, and many Dutch windmills still exist.

In the United States, the development of the \"water-pumping windmill\" was the major factor in allowing the farming and ranching of vast areas of North America, which were otherwise devoid of readily accessible water. They contributed to the expansion of rail transport systems throughout the world, by pumping water from wells to supply the needs of the steam locomotives of those early times.

The multi-bladed wind turbine atop a lattice tower made of wood or steel was, for many years, a fixture of the landscape throughout rural America.

The modern wind turbine was developed beginning in the 1980s, although designs are still under development.

Wind energy

The origin of wind is complex. The Earth is unevenly heated by the sun resulting in the poles receiving less energy from the sun than the equator does. Also the dry land heats up (and cools down) more quickly than the seas do. The differential heating drives a global atmospheric convection system reaching from the Earth's surface to the stratosphere which acts as a virtual ceiling. Most of the energy stored in these wind movements can be found at high altitudes where continuous wind speeds of over 160 km/h (100 mph) occur. Eventually, the wind energy is converted through friction into diffuse heat throughout the Earth's surface and the atmosphere.

Read more at Wikipedia.org