Wind Power at the Industrial Scale

Wind farms are a great way to capture wind energy as evidenced by the recent increases in wind turbine farm installations. Based on raw output, however, wind turbine systems do not compete well with our modern combustion based energy stations. Combustion fuels have high energy density at low cost and in most cases outperform the cost of installing and maintaining wind power.

This is not as bad as you might intially think. The reality is that the things we have grown to love are provided by a solid industrial base. These industries include manufacturing, timber, metallurgy, mining and even production of equipment used to harvest our food supply. A heavy industrial base needs very reliable power in very large quantities.

Let’s face it, when it comes to smelting ores, machining metals, and forging steel (just to name a few), these types of operations take a whole lot of juice. A large and varied heavy infrastructure like this is hard to power on wind or alternative energy alone. The motive energy and processing is too significant.

Wind turbines do makes sense in a large variety of applications, however. Wind machines are an age old, tried and true, simple way to tap a source of free energy.

Wind turbines are great for supplying residential power and for smaller industrial applications.

As an example, a 500 MegaWatt power plant can fit in a relatively small space, less than a 1/4 square mile without much difficulty. As a comparison consider a wind power farm of equal capacity. Estimating 2 MegaWatts per turbine would then require over 250 wind turbines be placed in service. Imagine the area this would require!

Keep in mind, also, that a steady supply of Wind is required which is not always the case.

There are excellent locations and conditions for wind power and it should be part of our energy portfolio. But we can not abandon our combustion technologies where efficiencies and pollution controls continue to improve, combustion is the heart of our economy driving our heavy industry.

Learn more about wind turbines. Stop by Jim’s site where you can find out all about wind power and what it can do for you.

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