WIND POWER IS ONE OF HALF A DOZEN RENEWABLE ENERGY ANSWERS TO OUR NEEDS FUTURE

We need to find ways to generate energy to help us live like always, to use less oil and less carbon based fuels. They are ruining our climate. To date we have a number of ways to do this including Biofuels, Biomass, Geothermal power, Hydro power, Solar power, Tidal power. But wind power offers some advantages to adding to our renewable resources. Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form, such as electricity, using wind turbines. For centuries  windmills,  were used to crush grain or to pump water. Although wind currently produces just over 1% of world-wide electricity use, it accounts for approximately 20% of electricity production in Denmark, 9% in Spain, and 7% in Germany. Globally, wind power generation more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2006.

Wind power is produced in large scale wind farms connected to electrical grids.This energy is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions when it displaces fossil-fuel-derived electricity. The origin of wind is complex. The Earth is unevenly heated by the sun resulting in the poles receiving less energy from the sun than the equator does. Also the dry land heats up (and cools down) more quickly than the seas do. The differential heating drives a global atmospheric convection system reaching from the Earth's surface to the stratosphere.This simply put is wind.

Germany has 18,600 wind turbines, mostly in the north of the country. US Department of Energy studies have concluded wind harvested in just three of the fifty U.S. states could provide enough electricity to power the entire nation, and that offshore wind farms could do the same job. Small wind generation systems with capacities of 100 kW or less are usually used to power homes, farms, and small businesses. Isolated communities, that otherwise rely on diesel generators, may use wind turbines to displace diesel fuel consumption. The total value of new generating equipment installed in 2006 reached US$23 billion. The marginal cost of wind energy once a plant is constructed is usually less than 1 cent per kilowatt-hour. With all of these renewable sources of energy available, especially wind power, we should be able to solve our energy problems in the foreseeable future.