TurbineCMS

Archive for the ‘Wind Turbine’ Category

What is a wind turbine?

A wind turbine is also referred to as a windmill or wind generator. Though the terms are used interchangeably, there is a minor difference. The wind turbine is the device that makes use of the wind energy to produce mechanical energy. This mechanical energy is then used as is or converted into electrical energy. A windmill uses the mechanical energy as is for pumping out water or for grinding purposes whereas the wind generator is the one that produces electrical energy.

What are the different types of wind turbines?

Wind turbines are classified into two kinds based on their orientation:

o Horizontal axis turbines – The blades in these wind turbines rotate along a horizontal axis.

o Vertical axis turbines – The blades in these turbines rotate along a vertical axis.

The horizontal axis wind turbines are more commonly used. They are more efficient that vertical axis turbines.

What are the advantages of installing a wind turbine?

Let’s look at the major advantages of a wind turbine:

o Power-saving: Since the wind turbines use a free energy, the wind energy, they prove to be a very cost-effective mechanism for generating electricity, thus helping not only save power but also generate power for the world.

o Cost-effective: The only cost involved in installing a wind turbine is the initial cost and the cost of maintenance. The energy comes free and there is no other fuel.

o Environment-friendly: The wind turbines are environment friendly in a way that they do emit harmful gases or affect the environment in any way.

o Uninterrupted power supply: A wind generator helps you become independent of government’s electricity supply. Moreover, you overcome the hurdles of power outages.

What are the factors you should consider for installing a wind turbine?
While installing a wind turbine is extremely beneficial for you and for the rest of the world, you must take care not to implement the solution in an incorrect way. You should take into consideration the following when installing a wind turbine.

Make sure the following two pre-requisites are met:

o The site for installation is at least of one acre area.

o The average wind speed is around 11 miles per hour.

o Make sure the tower and the base are sturdy. It is important to foresee the turbulence in the wind before you invest in the wind turbine.

o Make sure the tower’s height and the distance between the wind generator and the cells are optimum.

Home wind turbine kits can make achieving wind energy at home a lot easier for you. The reason is all the parts come in one place and you don’t have to go looking for them here and yon.

Searching for the parts you need can be the most time-consuming portion of any home project. That’s really the advantage of a kit – no decisions about what particular pieces and parts to use. All those decisions are made for you because what comes with the kit is what exactly you need to install.

Here are the major pros of buying home wind turbine kits and why it’s a better idea than building your turbine from a set of plans:

1. The heavy lifting is done for you – All of your parts in the box. Once you have decided to build your own wind turbine at home, you have a choice whether you buy a kit or by plans or diagrams off the Internet. Certainly, the cheapest route to go is to buy a set of plans, because they can cost less than $10 and allow you to build a wind turbine is worth several thousand and will save you money for the next 20 years. But, there is an order of magnitude more work involved if you go the “plans” route.

The simplest thing is just to buy a kit where the parts of already preselected and all you have to do is assemble them.

2. You benefit from the collective expertise of the people who have assembled the kit and sold it to you. If you if you go the plan and diagram route, then there are a lot of decisions that you have to make. While the plans will give you a list of the names of the components and the size of the components you need, they don’t tell you exactly what to buy. That’s up to you. So, you’ve got to do your homework and make sure that you are buying optimal parts for the task – that can be a project all in itself (the choosing, that is).

That can be more than a little stressful if you’ve never done that sort of thing before. Actually, the extra work can also slam the brakes on your whole project if you can’t find the part you’re looking for.

3. Efficiency. By constructing a wind device in kit form, you are benefiting also from the fact that you will be able to build project momentum. What I mean by that is, by not having to go on a scavenger hunt for parts, you will build momentum into your project from the gitgo by being able do everything sequentially and in a shorter period of time.

In conclusion, going with wind turbine kits instead of a set of plans doesn’t make you any less of a do-it-yourselfer. It is just simply the best way to go if you limited amount of time and are trying to get a wind device up and running and saving you energy dollars the quickest and most cost effectively.

In the alternative energy market the terms windmill, wind turbine and wind generator tend to be used interchangeably, as if they all mean the same thing. If the phrases how to build a windmill or build a wind turbine or make a wind generator are put into Google or any other search engine, the results will be very similar.

To most people that is probably enough information to get what they need. But do these terms actually relate to the same type of machine?

Well, not exactly. Traditionally the windmill was a machine that converted wind energy into rotational movement that operated a grinding stone. This was used to produce flour from grain. Some windmills used the mechanical rotation to work saws or water pumps. Many rural areas use windmill-powered water pumps to this day, to irrigate crops or provide domestic water from wells. For a number of reasons windmills tend to have four, six, eight or even more blades, often with variable pitch to control their rotational speed in varying wind conditions.

Most of us would instantly recognize a windmill and give it its correct name.

Increasingly wind energy is being used to produce electricity, now that power from fossil fuels is becoming so expensive. Technically, if the machine uses the wind to generate electricity, it becomes – strangely enough – a wind generator, although the term wind electricity generator would be more appropriate. So a windmill is not, strictly speaking, the same as a wind generator.

Large commercial wind generators use gears to convert the low-speed rotation of the propellers to high-speed revolutions for more efficient operation of the electricity generators onboard, and usually produce alternating current (AC) for direct feed-in to the utility grid. These are the tall, graceful – some would say unsightly – towers with three-bladed propellers we see in so many landscapes these days.

The smaller variety typically used in home wind generator applications uses a simple, usually three-bladed, propeller linked directly to a generator to produce direct current (DC). This is then fed into a storage battery or, through a device called an inverter, converted to AC for powering domestic appliances.

A turbine is a rotary engine and has many different applications. Most modern aircraft engines are jet turbines. A wind turbine is a rotary engine that converts wind into rotational energy, which can then be used to drive a generator and produce electricity. Thus wind turbines and wind generators are actually the same things but again, technically, once a wind turbine is used to produce electricity, it should be called a wind generator.

But all this is really of academic interest only. If you want to know how to build a windmill, or make a wind generator, or build a wind turbine, just go ahead – ask Google!