Wind Energy

Once called windmills, the technology used to harness the power of wind has advanced significantly over the past ten years, with the United States increasing its wind power capacity 30% year over year. Wind turbines, as they are now called, collect and convert the kinetic energy that wind produces into electricity to help power the grid.

This aerial view of a wind turbine plant shows how a group of wind turbines can make electricity for the utility grid. The electricity is sent through transmission and distribution lines to homes, businesses, schools, and so on.

Wind Energy

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Wind power is the use of wind energy to generate useful work. Historically, wind power was used by sails, windmills and windpumps, but today it is mostly used to generate electricity. This article deals only with wind power for electricity generation.Today, wind power is generated almost completely with wind turbines, generally grouped into wind farms and connected to the electrical grid.

Wind power is considered a sustainable, renewable energy source, and has a much smaller impact on the environment compared to burning fossil fuels. Wind power is variable, so it needs energy storage or other dispatchable generation energy sources to attain a reliable supply of electricity. Land-based (onshore) wind farms have a greater visual impact on the landscape than most other power stations per energy produced.[7][8] Wind farms sited offshore have less visual impact and have higher capacity factors, although they are generally more expensive.[4] Offshore wind power currently has a share of about 10% of new installations.[9]

Regions in the higher northern and southern latitudes have the highest potential for wind power.[11] In most regions, wind power generation is higher in nighttime, and in winter when solar power output is low. For this reason, combinations of wind and solar power are suitable in many countries.[12]

Wind is air movement in the Earth's atmosphere. In a unit of time, say 1 second, the volume of air that had passed an area A A is A v {\displaystyle Av} . If the air density is r r , the mass of this volume of air is M = r A v {\displaystyle M=rAv} , and the power transfer, or energy transfer per second is P = 1 2 M v 2 = 1 2 A r v 3 {\displaystyle P={\frac {1}{2}}Mv^{2}={\frac {1}{2}}Arv^{3}} . Wind power is thus proportional to the third power of the wind speed; the available power increases eightfold when the wind speed doubles. Change of wind speed by a factor of 2.1544 increases the wind power by one order of magnitude (multiply by 10).

The global wind kinetic energy averaged approximately 1.50 MJ/m2 over the period from 1979 to 2010, 1.31 MJ/m2 in the Northern Hemisphere with 1.70 MJ/m2 in the Southern Hemisphere. The atmosphere acts as a thermal engine, absorbing heat at higher temperatures, releasing heat at lower temperatures. The process is responsible for the production of wind kinetic energy at a rate of 2.46 W/m2 thus sustaining the circulation of the atmosphere against friction.[15]

Through wind resource assessment, it is possible to estimate wind power potential globally, by country or region, or for a specific site. The Global Wind Atlas provided by the Technical University of Denmark in partnership with the World Bank provides a global assessment of wind power potential.[13][16][17]Unlike 'static' wind resource atlases which average estimates of wind speed and power density across multiple years, tools such as Renewables.ninja provide time-varying simulations of wind speed and power output from different wind turbine models at an hourly resolution.[18] More detailed, site-specific assessments of wind resource potential can be obtained from specialist commercial providers, and many of the larger wind developers have in-house modeling capabilities.

The total amount of economically extractable power available from the wind is considerably more than present human power use from all sources.[19] The strength of wind varies, and an average value for a given location does not alone indicate the amount of energy a wind turbine could produce there.

To assess prospective wind power sites, a probability distribution function is often fit to the observed wind speed data.[20] Different locations will have different wind speed distributions. The Weibull model closely mirrors the actual distribution of hourly/ten-minute wind speeds at many locations. The Weibull factor is often close to 2 and therefore a Rayleigh distribution can be used as a less accurate, but simpler model.[21]

In a wind farm, individual turbines are interconnected with a medium voltage (often 34.5 kV) power collection system[26] and communications network. In general, a distance of 7D (7 times the rotor diameter of the wind turbine) is set between each turbine in a fully developed wind farm.[27] At a substation, this medium-voltage electric current is increased in voltage with a transformer for connection to the high voltage electric power transmission system.[28]

Most modern turbines use variable speed generators combined with either a partial or full-scale power converter between the turbine generator and the collector system, which generally have more desirable properties for grid interconnection and have low voltage ride through-capabilities.[29] Modern turbines use either doubly fed electric machines with partial-scale converters or squirrel-cage induction generators or synchronous generators (both permanently and electrically excited) with full-scale converters.[30] Black start is possible[31] and is being further developed for places (such as Iowa) which generate most of their electricity from wind.[32]

Transmission system operators will supply a wind farm developer with a grid code to specify the requirements for interconnection to the transmission grid. This will include the power factor, the constancy of frequency, and the dynamic behaviour of the wind farm turbines during a system fault.[33][34]

Offshore wind power is wind farms in large bodies of water, usually the sea. These installations can use the more frequent and powerful winds that are available in these locations and have less visual impact on the landscape than land-based projects. However, the construction and maintenance costs are considerably higher.[36][37]

When the transmission capacity does not meet the generation capacity, wind farms are forced to produce below their full potential or stop running altogether, in a process known as curtailment. While this leads to potential renewable generation left untapped, it prevents possible grid overload or risk to reliable service.[41]

One of the biggest current challenges to wind power grid integration in some countries is the necessity of developing new transmission lines to carry power from wind farms, usually in remote lowly populated areas due to availability of wind, to high load locations, usually on the coasts where population density is higher.[42] Any existing transmission lines in remote locations may not have been designed for the transport of large amounts of energy.[43] In particular geographic regions, peak wind speeds may not coincide with peak demand for electrical power, whether offshore or onshore. A possible future option may be to interconnect widely dispersed geographic areas with an HVDC super grid.[44]

In 2020, wind supplied almost 1600 TWh of electricity, which was over 5% of worldwide electrical generation and about 2% of energy consumption.[2][3] With over 100 GW added during 2020, mostly in China, global installed wind power capacity reached more than 730 GW.[4][3] But to help meet the Paris Agreement's goals to limit climate change, analysts say it should expand much faster - by over 1% of electricity generation per year.[6] Expansion of wind power is being hindered by fossil fuel subsidies.[48][49][50]

The actual amount of electric power that wind can generate is calculated by multiplying the nameplate capacity by the capacity factor, which varies according to equipment and location. Estimates of the capacity factors for wind installations are in the range of 35% to 44%.[51]

Since wind speed is not constant, a wind farm's annual energy production is never as much as the sum of the generator nameplate ratings multiplied by the total hours in a year. The ratio of actual productivity in a year to this theoretical maximum is called the capacity factor. Online data is available for some locations, and the capacity factor can be calculated from the yearly output.[52][53]

Wind energy penetration is the fraction of energy produced by wind compared with the total generation. Wind power's share of worldwide electricity usage in 2021 was almost 7%,[55] up from 3.5% in 2015.[56][57]

There is no generally accepted maximum level of wind penetration. The limit for a particular grid will depend on the existing generating plants, pricing mechanisms, capacity for energy storage, demand management, and other factors. An interconnected electric power grid will already include reserve generating and transmission capacity to allow for equipment failures. This reserve capacity can also serve to compensate for the varying power generation produced by wind stations. Studies have indicated that 20% of the total annual electrical energy consumption may be incorporated with minimal difficulty.[58] These studies have been for locations with geographically dispersed wind farms, some degree of dispatchable energy or hydropower with storage capacity, demand management, and interconnected to a large grid area enabling the export of electric power when needed. Electrical utilities continue to study the effects of large-scale penetration of wind generation on system stability.[59] 006ab0faaa