- energy accomplished by it due to its position
- and kinetic energy
- energy due to its speed of movement.

A body may possess either or both types of energy. All moving objects stored kinetic energy just as an object at a height represents stored potential energy. The wind, a body of air, also represents kinetic energy. It's this wind power that helps when you sail boats.

How wind power Works

In the old skool windmill, wind - the stream of moving air - impinges on the blades of the windmill and can cause them to rotate by "pushing" against them; in this process the wind passes part of its kinetic energy to the blades of the windmill and slows down due to loss of part of its energy. The windmill uses the wind power bought in this fashion in doing the work of pumping water or grinding grains.

Today's wind mill blades are designed much better in order that they can extract energy out of the wind (or breeze) blowing over it better. It is natural that blades of a wind mill engineered to produce a huge quantity of power are giant. Windmills with blades measuring about 100 or 2 hundred feet across aren't uncommon.

Wind Mills and Their Locations

The majority of the modern day wind mills are the horizontal axis type and they seem like big plane propellers mounted on a tall tower. The high power machines have blades with huge span and their mounting towers also are awfully tall ; a normal wind machine of this kind might be about two hundred and fifty feet tall with three-bladed propellers about 2 hundred feet across. The turbine shaft is horizontal and quite short. In the event of little capacity machines the generator is mounted immediately on the turbine shaft; in the event of higher capacity machines the turbine shaft drives generator through gears in order to increase the velocity of the generator. The electric wires run down along the tower for delivering power.

Tiny wind machines to be used with single houses or enterprises are about one hundred kW or less in power; massive turbines for commercial use could be with capacities of five MW or even more. High power installations for delivering wind power to utility grid or network have a bunch of wind mills grouped together as wind mill farms.

For efficient operation a wind mill should be situated where the average wind speed is not less than ten miles an hour. Thanks to the prerequisite of the high towers and huge sweep of blades mandatory, usually wind mills for power applications won't be set up in locations of less than an acre.Power plants for changing wind power are sometimes situated a long way away from towns. They're set up where wind speed will be high, where obstructions to wind will be less and where differences due to the season will be less. Often wind speeds are higher at higher altitudes and in open areas. Smooth rounded hills, open fields and shorelines are good sites for wind mills. Mountain openings are also acceptable because they cause wind funneling augmenting the rate of wind.