Wind turbine blades rotate when hit by the wind. And this doesn’t have to be a strong wind, either: the blades of most turbines will start turning at a wind speed of 3-5 meters per second, which is a gentle breeze.

It’s this spinning motion that turns a shaft in the nacelle – which is the box-like structure at the top of a wind turbine. A generator built into the nacelle then converts the kinetic energy of the turning shaft into electrical energy. This then passes through a transformer, which steps up the voltage so it can be transported on the National Grid or used by a local site.

What's inside a wind turbine?

Key parts of a wind turbine?

Although we talk about "wind turbines," the turbine is only one of the parts inside these machines. For most (but not all) turbines, another key part is a gearbox whose gears convert the relatively slow rotation of the spinning blades into higher-speed motion—turning the drive shaft quickly enough to power the electricity generator.

The generator is an essential part of all turbines and you can think of it as being a bit like an enormous, scaled-up version of the dynamo on a bicycle. When you ride a bicycle, the dynamo touching the back wheel spins around and generates enough electricity to make a lamp light up. The same thing happens in a wind turbine, only the "dynamo" generator is driven by the turbine's rotor blades instead of by a bicycle wheel, and the "lamp" is a light in someone's home miles away. In practice, wind turbines use different types of generators that aren't very much like dynamos at all. (You can read about how they work, more generally, in our main article about generators.)

Check it out: -

https://www.energy.gov/maps/how-does-wind-turbine-work#:~:text=Wind%20turbines%20operate%20on%20a,a%20generator%20to%20create%20electricity.