Wind Energy

Wind energy is one of the fastest growing renewable energy resources in the world.

Wind farms as they are called include a number of wind turbines which generate electricity from windy areas. One of the biggest problems with wind farms is their intermittency. When the wind is not blowing, there is no electricity produced. Wind turbines therefore are placed in the most economical areas, often along pristine coastal regions.

How much energy? The amount of energy that is likely to be produced is determined by the capacity factor, which for most wind farms is about 25-30%. This means that if the wind farm is rated at 100MW, it will produce an average of 25-30MW. At any one time however the wind farm will be producing 100MW and at others 0MW. It all depends on the wind, and that brings about a number of issues with putting a lot of wind turbines on the system.

Whilst wind farms are typically suited to large scale installations, many home owners have chosen to install their own and store energy in a battery. This gets fed back into the grid or stored in batteries when there is more wind energy produced than the household needs at any one time, and when the wind is not blowing and you want the lights on, then the power comes from your batteries or the grid connected supply. A great book to get you started if you are looking into home or remote wind turbines is Build Your Own Wind Turbine.

Wind Farms on Google Earth

Here I have made a kmz file overlay for the wind turbines in Albany, Western Australia. Whilst there are many more wind farms on the way, this wind farm was one of the largest in the southern hemisphere at one point and set the trend for wind energy introduction in Australia.

Download Albany Windfarm .KMZ file

If you want to find out more about wind resources in Australia I can recommend reading the Wind resource assessment in Australia.

Wind Energy in the US