Your Questions About Wind Turbine Generators How They Work
Mandy asks…
What forms of energy and energy transformations are involved in wind turbines?
Hey
Im doing a research about wind turbines and how it generates energy using wind power
I need to know the energy conversions involved in the process of the wind turbines.
Im not quite sure on what forms of energy are involved
Here are all of the forms of energy:
thermal, electrical, radiant, nuclear potential, gravitation potential, kinetic, elastic potential, sound, and chemical potential.
I also need to know the wind turbines energy transformation equation.
For example a microwave oven,
electrical energy -> radiant energy -> thermal energy
Please help 🙂
help will be greatly appreciated and rewarded with points ofc
admin answers:
The mass and velocity of the air give it KE
The wind turbine blades convert the KE to ME (mechanical energy; the one you left out of your list of ‘all’ the forms of energy…!)
The generator converts the ME to electrical energy, the most useful grade of energy.
At each conversion point, some of the input energy is not used, causing the output energy to be less than the input. For ex: The wind downstream of the blades is slowed, but not stopped. Ergo, it still has some of its KE and the blades have picked up the rest as ME. As I recall, the maximum efficiency of any blade system is about 36%. The ME to EE step is about 90% efficient. Of course, all the efficiencies multiply, so you come out with less than 36%, but considering that the original wind energy is created directly from solar heating of land masses (ie, free), things don’t look so gloomy…….
Mark asks…
How much electricity do wind turbines generate?
Ignoring any technical things like wind speeds and all that, if the blades of a wind turbine magically span at a constant speed of 700RPM, how much electricity would a wind turbine produce? Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m assuming the size of the wind turbine wouldn’t matter in this scenario since all I’m interested in is the speed in which the blades are spinning and how that effects the electricity output.
Thanks in advance!
admin answers:
You know, with all of the conditions you’ve placed in this question, you could have asked, “If a generator spins at 700 RPM, how much electricity will it produce?”
A particular generator spinning at a constant 700 RPM will generate a certain amount of power, but a different generator spinning at the same speed would generate a different amount. Add back in all of the wind turbine stuff, and you get the same answer – “it depends.”
Powered by Yahoo! Answers
