While fossil fuels continue to diminish and negatively effect out environment, as their burning process produces around 21.3 billion tones of carbon dioxide per year, scientists around the world are searching for new and more efficient methods of generating energy.
Wind energy is an attractive alternative to fossil fuels. It's plentiful, clean, renewable, widely distributed, and produces no greenhouse gas emissions. Wind power is produced by harnessing the kinetic energy of wind and converting it into a useful form of energy by
- wind turbines to make electricity,
- wind mills for mechanical power,
- wind pumps for pumping water and drainage, or
- sails to propel ships.
Wind power don't consume fuel and don't produce pollution, such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, mercury or particulates, including aerosols, during normal operation, but still may be hazardous to the environment. Wind farms have an impact on wildlife. The main complaint against the wind turbines is danger to birds and bats. They may be injured by direct impact with turbine blades, towers, or transmission lines. Bats may also be killed when suddenly passing through a low air pressure region surrounding the turbine blade tips. Even so the number of birds killed by wind turbines is insignificant compared to the number that die as a result of exploitation of fossil fuels or other human activities. More research is needed in relation to the bats. The construction of wind farms is not commonly appreciated also due to their visual effects.
Wind power is non-dispatchable, that means that all of the available output must be taken when it's available. It's becoming more popular worldwide as a large scale energy source, although it still provides only less than 1% of global energy consumption.
No comments:
Post a Comment