Wind Power Project and Development throughout the World

WHAT IS WIND POWER?

Wind power is the use of air flow through wind turbines to mechanically power generators for electric power. Wind power, as an alternative to burning fossil fuels, is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, produces no greenhouse gas emissions during operation, consumes no water, and uses little land. The net effects on the environment are far less problematic than those of nonrenewable power sources.

Wind farms consist of many individual wind turbines which are connected to the electric power transmission network. Onshore wind is an inexpensive source of electric power, competitive with or in many places cheaper than coal or gas plants.

Wind power gives variable power which is very consistent from year to year but which has significant variation over shorter time scales. Power management techniques such as having excess capacity, geographically distributed turbines, dispatchable backing sources, sufficient hydroelectric power, exporting and importing power to neighboring areas, or reducing demand when wind production is low, can in many cases overcome these problems.

WIND POWER PRODUCTION 

As of 2015, Denmark generates 40% of its electric power from wind, and at least 83 other countries around the world are using wind power to supply their electric power grids. In 2014, global wind power capacity expanded 16% to 369,553 MW. Yearly wind energy production is also growing rapidly and has reached around 4% of worldwide electric power usage, 11.4% in the EU.

Wind power has been used as long as humans have put sails into the wind. Wind power was widely available and not confined to the banks of fast-flowing streams, or later, requiring sources of fuel.

Blyth's 10 metres (33 ft) high, cloth-sailed wind turbine was installed in the garden of his holiday cottage at Marykirk in Kincardineshire and was used to charge accumulators developed by the Frenchman Camille Alphonse Faure, to power the lighting in the cottage, thus making it the first house in the world to have its electric power supplied by wind power. Blyth offered the surplus electric power to the people of Marykirk for lighting the main street, however, they turned down the offer as they thought electric power was "the work of the devil.

The Brush wind turbine had a rotor 17 metres (56 ft) in diameter and was mounted on an 18 metres (59 ft) tower. The connected dynamo was used either to charge a bank of batteries or to operate up to 100 incandescent light bulbs, three arc lamps, and various motors in Brush's laboratory.

WIND POWER TECHNOLOGY

With the development of electric power, wind power found new applications in lighting buildings remote from centrally-generated power. Throughout the 20th century parallel paths developed small wind stations suitable for farms or residences, and larger utility-scale wind generators that could be connected to electric power grids for remote use of power. Today wind powered generators operate in every size range between tiny stations for battery charging at isolated residences, up to near-gigawatt sized offshore wind farms that provide electric power to national electrical networks.

Worldwide there are now over two hundred thousand wind turbines operating, with a total nameplate capacity of 432 GW as of end 2015. The European Union alone passed some 100 GW nameplate capacity in September 2012, while the United States surpassed 75 GW in 2015 and China's grid connected capacity passed 145 GW in 2015.

The United States pioneered wind farms and led the world in installed capacity in the 1980s and into the 1990s. As of 2011, 83 countries around the world were using wind power on a commercial basis.

Wind power capacity has expanded rapidly to 336 GW in June 2014, and wind energy production was around 4% of total worldwide electric power usage, and growing rapidly. The actual amount of electric power that wind is able to 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%.

Europe accounted for 48% of the world total wind power generation capacity in 2009. In 2010, Spain became Europe's leading producer of wind energy, achieving 42,976 GWh. Germany held the top spot in Europe in terms of installed capacity, with a total of 27,215 MW as of 31 December 2010. In 2015 wind power constituted 15.6% of all installed power generation capacity in the EU and it generates around 11.4% of its power.


Wind power is the use of air flow through wind turbines to mechanically power generators for electric power. As of 2015, Denmark generates 40% of its electric power from wind, and at least 83 other countries around the world are using wind power to supply their electric power grids. Blyth's 10 metres (33 ft) high, cloth-sailed wind turbine was installed in the garden of his holiday cottage at Marykirk in Kincardineshire and was used to charge accumulators developed by the Frenchman Camille Alphonse Faure, to power the lighting in the cottage, thus making it the first house in the world to have its electric power supplied by wind power. With the development of electric power, wind power found new applications in lighting buildings remote from centrally-generated power. In 2015 wind power constituted 15.6% of all installed power generation capacity in the EU and it generates around 11.4% of its power.

Reference link : Wikipedia