Archive:000/Wind power

File:wind-turbine1.jpg

A wind turbine

Wind power is a possible option for renewable energy.

Wind turbines convert wind to electricity.

A lot of people incorrectly call wind turbines "windmills". But in fact windmills are a much older technology, which use the wind to mill grains mechanically (no electricity involved).

Intermittency

Wind power is even more intermittent than solar. There can be weeks where the wind blows strong(...)( although if it blows too strong, power also can't be generated - more on this later ), and weeks where it barely blows at all.

Having multiple wind farms might somewhat reduce the intermittency. But in practice, this doesn't seem to help much.

Energy storage

Scaling up energy storage is already a challenge, even for solar which only needs about a day's worth of energy storage in general. Wind might need several weeks worth.

Maybe wind power could be stored via hydrogen, which doesn't have a fixed capacity the way batteries do. (...)( A battery can only store a fixed amount of energy at any given time. But hydrogen could be produced and stockpiled if necessary (as long as safety concerns are addressed). Hydrogen production units (electrolyzers) still have a fixed power rating: There's a limit to how much hydrogen can be produced per unit of time. ) This has its own challenges.

Suitable wind speeds

Most wind turbines can only generate power when wind speeds are between 3.5 m/s and 25 m/s. (...)( Power is proportional to the cube of the wind speed. ) When the wind speed is too high, the wind turbine has to switch itself off completely(...)( maybe with the right innovations, it could just dissipate excess power instead of shutting off completely? If so, we should write a page about it. ) to prevent damage.