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Design your own Renewable Energy Systems
Renewable Energy Solutions.... use wind and solar energy to reduce your power bills or completely eliminate them.
Living off the Grid..... newsletter that helps with off grid living, renewable energy, solar panels, and how to build your own homemade wind generator.
Wind Energy Guide....an informative guide to wind power and battery systems.
Teach yourself Solar Power.... build your own solar power system with this easy to follow guide.
Eco-Friendly Fuel Systems
Convert your car to run on water....drive your car using water as fuel while reducing emissions and preventing global warming.
Alternative Fuel Systems.... Learn how to run your car on water, hydrogen fuel systems, make biodiesel, and save money.
Make your own Biodiesel.....run your car on this environmental friendly fuel.
How to Save Money on your Energy Bills
Ultimate Gas Saver Guide....cut your gas spending in half.
Cut your Heating and Electric Bills in Half....homeowners, landlords, and renters looking to save.
Green Business Opportunities
Secrets of Battery Reconditioning....transform totally dead batteries to 100% charge capacity.
Socially Responsible Recycling Business....learn the secrets to recycling cell phones and protect the environment.
Clean Energy Grants from the US Government
Learn about Renewable Energy Grants from the US Government....tutorial for writing grants and getting funds for clean energy programs from the government.
Federal Grant Sources....search for renewable energy grants for your state.
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What is Wind Power?
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form, such as electricity, using wind turbines. Worldwide capacity of wind-powered generators is nearly 100 gigawatts. Although wind currently produces about 1% of world-wide electricity use, it accounts for a significant level of production in many countries, including Spain, Denmark, and Ireland. Globally last year, energy produced from wind power accounted for a growth level of more than five times the production of the year 2000.
Most wind power is generated in the form of electricity. Large scale wind farms are connected to electrical grids. Individual wind turbines can provide electricity to isolated locations.
Wind energy contributes to our energy security: an inexhaustible, domestic resource, it helps reduce our dependence on imports of natural gas, oil and other fuels, often from unstable countries. The US currently burns about 13 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas for electricity generation. During 2007, wind power will be reducing natural gas use for power generation by approximately 5%.
What is Wind Energy?
Wind energy is a converted form of solar energy. The sun's radiation heats different parts of the earth at different rates and times during the day or night. This in turn causes portions of the atmosphere to warm differently. Hot air rises, reducing the atmospheric pressure at the earth's surface, and cooler air is drawn in to replace it. The result is wind.
If you place an object like a rotor blade in the path of that wind, the wind will push on it, transferring some of its own energy of motion to the blade. This is how a wind turbine captures energy from the wind. The same thing happens with a sail boat. When moving air pushes on the barrier of the sail, it causes the boat to move. The wind has transferred its own energy of motion to the sailboat.
Wind energy is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions when it displaces fossil fuels. And, wind is a naturally occurring resource. Very little processing needs to be done to convert it into usable energy. Wind energy also has an excellent long term price stability due to easily forecastable projected operation and maintenance expenses.
Wind energy is a particularly appealing way to generate electricity because it is essentially pollution-free. More than half of all the electricity that is used in the U.S. is generated from burning coal, and in the process, large amounts of toxic metals, air pollutants, and greenhouse gases are emitted into the atmosphere.
Wind energy is readily available over a large geographic range of the U.S. The largest area, which stretches from Minnesota to Texas and California to Oklahoma, has enough wind almost everywhere to generate electricity economically, and there are many hills and passes in other states that are windy enough as well. In fact, 46 of the 50 states have some wind resources that could be developed.
What is the Wind Resource?
The wind resource or how fast the wind blows, how often, and when, plays a significant role in wind power generation cost. The power output from a wind turbine rises as a cube of wind speed. In other words, if wind speed doubles, the power output increases eight times. Therefore, higher wind speed is more easily and inexpensively captured.
Wind Power Today
Wind power is here and now. Over than 5,000 megawatts of wind generation – enough to serve more than 1 million American homes – was installed in 2007. With continued government encouragement to accelerate wind power development, this increasingly competitive source of energy will provide a steadily growing share of U.S. electricity and revitalize farms and rural communities – without consuming any natural resource or emitting any pollution or greenhouse gases. Wind energy works for our economy, environment, and energy security.
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