This document provides information about wind turbines and how they work to harness the power of wind. It discusses how wind is created by temperature differences heated by the sun. Wind turbines use lift and drag to spin rotor blades, converting the kinetic energy of wind into mechanical power to generate electricity. The best designs balance slowing wind speed enough to spin turbines without impeding airflow. Factors like wind direction, turbine spacing, and site limitations impact how much energy can be harvested at a given location from wind.

1. Wind Turbines
 A Journey into an Understanding of the
Technology used to Harness the power of Wind
 Your hosts: Sir James Kelley III and Dr. David N
Rahni

2. Policy Perspective
 On October 20th, 1956 Israeli forces swept into
Egypt and overcame local opposition as they raced
for the Suez Canal
 British and French forces intervened as part of a
“peace initiative” allowed the European powers to
occupy and control the Suez Canal again.
 The conflict cost over 1,000 Egyptians their lives

3. Denmark
 In 2001, the Danish Wind industry produced 4.3
Terawatt Hours (TWh) of electricity
 1 TWh (Terawatt Hour) = 1 trillion Watt Hours
(1,000,000,000,000)
 1 million barrels of oil produce can produce 73
Gigawatt Hours (GWh) of electricity
 1 GHw = 1 billion Watt Hours (1,000,000,000)
 Denmark used wind energy to create the
equivalent of 59,000,000 barrels of oil in 2001

4. Introduction to Wind
 Wind is caused by the energy radiated to the Earth
by the Sun
 Nuclear reactions take place inside the sun’s core,
where the temperature is 1 x 107 K
 This produces 4 x 1026 joules of electromagnetic
radiation every second that is radiated into space
 Some of it reaches the earth:
 strikes the equator directly (giving it the most radiation)
 diffuses along the Northern and Southern Hemisphere
 the poles receive the lowest amount of radiation

5. Creation of Seasons

6. Wind con’t
 The radiation from the sun heats the Earth's
surface
 Heating process creates temperature differences
between the:
 Land,Water, Air
 due to their different physical properties
• I.e. density
• Affects their respective abilities to absorb
heat

7. Process of Wind Creation
 Wind “current of air (air
moving from an A of high P to
an A of low P
 hot air rises, it expands,
becomes less dense, and is then
replaced by denser, cooler air
 Heated air rises from equator
 moves north and south in the
upper levels of the atmosphere
 circulates above cooler air
 At roughly 30° latitude Coriolis
Effect stops air.
 high pressure area
 The Coriolis Effect “ the
tendency for any moving
body on or above the
earth's surface to drift
sideways from its course
because of the earth's
rotation
 Northern Hemisphere
deflection right
 Southern Hemisphere it is
to the left

8. Coriolis Effect: 3 Cell Effect

9. Harnessing the Wind

10. Wind Turbines
 “rotary engine in which the kinetic energy of a
moving fluid is converted into mechanical energy
by causing a bladed rotor to rotate”
 opposite of a fan
 turbine blades spin from the wind and make
energy, instead of using energy to make wind
 Wind rotates the turbine blades
 spins a shaft connected to a generator
 The spinning of the shaft in the generator
makes electricity

11. Construction: Wind Sheer
 Wind turbines, like windmills, are mounted on a
tower to capture the most wind energy
 wind speed varies by height
 wind current 100m above the ground dropped in
speed by 10% when its height declined to 50m
 property is known as wind sheer
 wind speed increases in speed with height,
 due to friction at the Earth’s surface
 The Hub heights of modern wind turbines, which produce
600 to 1,500 kW of electricity, are usually 40 to 80 meters
above ground

12. Internal Parts: The “Hub”

13. Turbines: Two Types
 Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines
 Vertical Axis Wind Turbines

14. Two Types
 Vertical Axis Advantages
 Can place generator on
ground
 You don’t need a yaw
mechanism for wind
angle
 Disadvantages
 Lower wind speeds at
ground level
 Less efficiency
 Requires a “push”
 Horizontal Advantages
 Higher wind speeds
 Great efficiency
 Disadvantages
 Angle of turbine is
relevant
 Difficult access to
generator for repairs

15. Energy: Kinetic to Electric
 Wind has kinetic energy: Energy of motion
 KE = ½ M * U2
 The Mass (M) of Air per second is
 volume (V) multiplied by its density (D)
• M = VD
• density of air = 1.2929 kilograms/m
 The mass of air per second (M)
 traveling though a hoop is the area of the hoop (A)
 multiplied by speed of the wind per second (u)
 multiplied the density of air (D)
• M = AuD
 area of the hoop (A) is radius (r) squared
• A = П r2

16. Catching the Wind!
 Turbines catch the wind's energy with their propeller-like
blades
 Usually, two or three blades are mounted on a shaft to form a
rotor
 The wind turbine blade acts an airplane wing
 When the wind blows a pocket of low-pressure air forms on
the downwind side of the blade
 Air pressure = force exerted on an object by the weight of
particles in air
 measured in:
 Inches of Mercury (“Hg),A
 Amospheres (Atm)
 Millibars (mb)
 1013.25 mb = 29.92 “Hg = 1.0 atm.[2] At standard or normal
atmospheric pressure, and at 15° C, air usually weighs about 1.225
kilograms per cubic meter
[

17. Catching the Wind! Con’t
 When air pressure is low in one locality, such as the downwind
side of a wind turbine blade, air from another area will rush in
to equal out the air pressure
 The low-pressure air pocket created by the wind turbine blade
then pulls the blade toward it, causing the rotor to turn
 This process is referred to as lift. The force of the lift is
actually much stronger than the wind's force against the front
side of the blade, which is called drag
 The combination of lift and drag causes the rotor to spin like a
propeller
 causes the spinning of the turbine’s shaft.
 When shaft spins KE of movement is converted by
generator into usable electricity

18. KE to Usable Energy

19. Bernoulli’s Principle
 Bernoulli’s Principle
 EnergyKinetic + EnergyPressure = EnergyPressure
+ Energy Kinetic
 Example:
 If Energy Kinetic1 = (5), and Energy
Pressure1 = (11)
 and Energy Pressure2 drops to (1)
 then Kinetic Energy2 Increases to (15)

20. Setup Types
 stand-alone
 not connected to a power grid
 power created is directly channeled into powered
site
 utility power grid
 Stores energy
 connection must be available
 Combined w/ a photovoltaic (solar cell) system
 has solar cells mounted on it.
 Solar cells - thin wafers of silicon which, when
exposed to sunlight, produce…electric current

21. Efficiency
 large number of wind turbines are usually built
close together to form what is referred to as a wind
plant
 The world’s largest wind plant located off the
coast of Oregon has 450 wind turbines
 generates 300 MWh of energy
 meets the needs of 70,000 homes
 This practice utilizes an area suited for wind
energy by deploying multiple units

22. Limitations
 limit to the amount of energy that can be harnessed by an
individual wind turbine
 The more kinetic energy that a wind turbine pulls out of the
wind, the more the wind will be slowed down as it leaves
 If a designer tried to extract all the energy from the wind
 air would move away with the speed zero
 air prevented from entering the rotor of the turbine
 If the designer did the exact opposite and allowed the wind to
pass through the wind turbine without being hindered at all,
again,
 energy will not be cultivated,
 since the rotor blades would not be spun, the
 shaft wouldn’t spin
 kinetic energy would not be converted into electricity

23. Betz Law
 designer of a wind turbine must find an ideal
balance between these two extremes
 Fortunately for wind energy advocates and
enthusiasts there is a simple answer to this
dilemma
 Under Betz Law an ideal wind turbine would slow
down the wind by 2/3 of its original speed (the
capture of 59.6% of the wind’s speed).

24. Site Limitations
 The direction that wind travels in
 angel of the turbine’s rotors are
 important limitations and considerations
 Wind at a site is being slowed down by each
turbine
 limit to the amount of individual units a site can
support
 NIMBY
 Birds

25. The End
The Nomads of Iran