Wind Energy

Today, wind power generates approximately 5.7% of the total electricity used in America today and is currently the fastest growing form of energy generation in the world. According to the wind energy foundation's website, the wind energy produced in 2013 reduced the total amount of CO2 produced by the United States by 4.4%, which is equivalent to the emissions of 17 million cars in the same time period. The way windmills work is actually quite simple. A vertical fan is placed in a field that has high winds, and the wind spins the fan the same way that a pinwheel spins when you blow on it. The only difference is attached to the base of the fan blades is a fixed generator that uses friction to generate electricity. Thanks to windmills being so profitable, the technology has been able to improve greatly over the past decades. In fact, windmills today produce 15 times the energy that windmill produced in the 90's meaning they are much more efficient at turning mechanical wind energy into electricity. One benefit that wind power has over almost every other form of clean energy is it hardly uses any water in the generating process. This saves millions and millions of gallons of water daily. The only drawback to wind power is it is completely reliant on wind of course. And wind is often very unpredictable making the amount of power a windmill produces every day, or week, or year hard to determine. This means there needs to always be another electricity generator available at the windmill power grid to feed extra electricity into the grid when the windmills aren't preforming to par. Besides this one flaw, wind energy is an excellent form of clean energy that can hopefully put an end to the use of fossil fuels. The Wind Energy Foundation has a lot of interesting data regarding wind power, and I would highly recommend visiting their website to learn more about wind power. Thanks for reading!