By Michael Ashcroft
Advantages of Wind Power
There are many advantages of wind power over traditional fossil fuels (and indeed other forms of renewable energy). Unfortunately some of these advantages are hard to see because of the disadvantages of wind power, but no system is perfect.
- Clean: Aside from the manufacturing process, wind power emits absolutely no greenhouse gases.
- Free: Ok not in terms of money, but there are no fuel concerns. As long as the wind blows, you get electricity. There are no worries about sourcing fuel from elsewhere to make it work.
- Passive: What I mean by this is that you don't need to operate wind turbines. Once you put them up, aside from routine maintenance, they will work. This makes them ideal for...
- "Place"-ability: Due to their nature, wind turbines can be placed in a variety of rather inhospitable locations. In fact, they are ideal for mountainous/exposed regions where regular power plants are unsuitable, because of the strong winds.
- Decentralised: There isn't one big power plant which generates a huge amount of electricity, but lots of smaller ones. This means there's less chance of a large failure and it's also less susceptible to some sort of interference. In fact, wind power is ideal for microgeneration.
- Domestic: Wind power lends itself well to domestic applications, as wind turbines can be virtually any size. They can be fitted to rooftops (though these are less efficient) or smaller versions can be placed in back gardens.
Where there are advantages of wind power, there are bound to be disadvantages of wind power! And here they are...
Disadvantages of Wind Power
- Reliability: Wind power needs wind. This is obvious, but there isn't always wind available! The turbines need a minimum wind speed to get them spinning, and can only operate up to a maximum wind speed, after which they have to be locked. Obviously it would be dangerous to have them on in gale force winds! This range is quite large though, so electricity is generated a lot of the time.
- Expense: Wind turbines are quite expensive, especially as you need so many to match the output of a regular power station. A modern wind turbine generates between 1 and 2 MW (1 MW = 1,000,000 Watts) while a power plant generates something of the order of 1 GW (1,000,000,000 W). So, you'd need between 500 and 1000 to match a power plant.
- National Security!: There was a recent discovery that wind power can even affect national security! It seems wind farms cause holes in RADAR coverage as the blades on the turbines confuse the system. Apparently they look like planes. It's so bad that they cause a large RADAR shadow behind them!
- Wildlife: There have long been arguments that wind turbines affect migratory birds, but more recently it's been discovered that they can make bats' lungs explode!
- Aesthetics: This one really is down to personal taste, but it should be included here because farms have often been banned for exactly this reason.
Michael Ashcroft is a Physics student at Imperial College London, with a passion for Environmental and Energy issues. In fact, he hopes to make this his career. He's also a keen musician and photographer, and writes articles on Environmental topics for his website. For more articles, please visit http://www.howtopowertheworld.com
