With the growing demand for alternative power sources, scientists and different manufacturers are starting to piece together different types of green equipment. You now have solar powered devices small enough to run a laptop computer and large enough to power entire office buildings. Solar and wind powered jets have soared through the sky and incredible heights and speeds, all while leaving every drop of oil and gas on the ground. These incredible advancements are made possible by peoples’ dedication to save our planet. But even though we have new devices which create energy in many different ways, some have stayed the exact same for many years. 

A wind turbine is a very simple piece of equipment. It is a rotating machine that converts the kinetic energy in wind into mechanical energy for our use with everyday electrical needs. If the mechanical energy is used directly by machinery, then the device is referred to as simple a windmill. But if the mechanical energy is then converted to electricity, the machine is called a wind turbine. Wind machines have been around since 200 B.C., when the Persians used them for grinding grain. They then moved from the Roman’s, to the Dutch, and ultimately to Cleveland, Ohio where the first windmill was used to produce electricity.

What a lot of people don’t know is that wind energy is also a form of solar energy. The sun’s radiation heats different parts of the earth at different rates. This in turn causes portions of our atmosphere to warm differently. The hot air rises and reduces the atmospheric pressure of the earth’s surface. And when the cooler air is drawn in to replace it, the result is wind. A wind turbine system is pretty basic in design. There are only two main designs of turbines: vertical-axis and horizontal-axis. Horizontal wind turbines are the most common, constituting nearly all of the utility –scale turbines in the global market. Utility-scale turbines produce 100 kilowatts kW, or larger.

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