Pros And Cons Of Wind Power Environmental Sciences Essay

Wind power has been used by people throughout history and converted into usable energy. Small windmills have been providing power for rural homes throughout the world since almost a hundred years ago. They were used for powering water pumps and also converted wind into useable electricity for homes.

In the 1930’s, programs to bring electricity to more remote areas extended the electrical grid system to these areas causing windmill generated power to gradually be replaced by electricity generated by power stations which burnt fossil fuels such as oil and coal to generate electricity. This eventually caused the disappearance of windmills in rural areas.

However, in recent times, new more modern and advanced wind machines are beginning to appear on the landscape of many regions of the world. Discovery of windy rural areas has enabled people to harness the power of the wind in much larger quantities than ever before. Through technology, it is possible to now generate clean, cost effective, and renewable energy. This could range from a single turbine powering a single landowner’s home and facilities, to large scale wind farms which could supply power to the grid itself and in turn provide electrical needs to hundreds of homes. Advancement of technology and it declining cost makes wind generated electricity more competitive with fossil fuel generated electricity. The cost of wind generated electricity has decreased greatly since the beginning, and it is estimated that wind power supply ten to twenty percent of electricity needs in the United States could within three to four decades.

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Despite these the impressive advantages of wild resources, it is still only in an infancy stage in many parts of the world. Only recent pollution laws, increase in fossil fuel costs and the fear of the exhaustion of fossil fuels have led to the intense development of wind power.

Wind energy has many advantages, for example, wind is free and with modern technology it can be captured efficiently. Wind is naturally produced when there are pressure differences in the air above the earth’s surface. When air gets heated up, it rises creating a low pressure area. Cooler, high pressure air from the surroundings the rush in the take its place. This creates wind. This is especially true in coastal areas due to the fact that water takes longer to heat up as compared to air, therefore resulting in a great difference in pressure between the air above the water and land, which results in exceptionally strong winds. Mountainous areas also have strong winds that could potentially power wind turbines. As different slopes are heated at different times of the day, pressure differences are created in the mountain range creating wind. In certain instances, the shape of the mountains and valleys may also act as a funnel, causing the wind to accelerate to higher speed as the approach these areas.

Once wind turbines are built in place, the energy they produces do not cause green house gases or any other form of pollution. This means that with time, the operation of the wind turbine would actually make up for whatever “carbon footprint” it has left because of its construction. The power produced by the wind turbine over time would exceed what was used in the form of fossil fuels, and raw materials during it construction. Given enough time, a wind turbine would actually pay for its own construction and maintenance through the revenue it generates by producing power.

Although wind turbines often reach up to above 50 meters tall, each single turbine only takes up a small plot of land. This is due to advancement of technology where thanks to modern materials and designs. Wind turbine towers are and with space aged materials which are strong and light and designed to have minimum drag resistance. Also because turbines have to be spaced a certain distance from each other, the land in between them can still be used for other purposes such as farming or even for building homes.

Remote areas which are located far away from the main power grid can use wind turbines to produce their own electricity. Just a few wind turbines could potentially supply power to a small community located far away from the power grid, saving the cost of extending the grid to the community. Wind turbines are also available in many different sizes. This means that people from all walks of life can make use of wind turbines be it for personal use to supply electricity to a single home or to supply power to business or even small town or villages.

As wind occurs all over the world, there is no place in the world that the power of wind cannot be harvested. This could be an advantage for third world countries where there is no electricity supply. Since wind turbines only require an initial start-up cost and minimal maintenance cost, it could be possible to provide electricity for poorer settlements or countries.

However, the strength of wind will almost never be constant. It varies from nothing at all to storm force. This implies that wind turbines will not be able to produce consistent electricity at all times. There will even be times when it produces on energy at all. Due to this, the wind turbine has to be located in a location where there is enough wind so that it would be able to run at energy producing speeds for most of the year. For this to happen, many factors have to be taken into consideration. Wind speed data has to be recorded for a specific location at least a year to ensure that the wind conditions would be suitable for building a wind turbine. Other factors that have to be considered include any obstacles that the wind may encounter before it is able to reach the turbine such as buildings and trees.

Location of wind turbines due to their nature would usually have to be located in open areas. This in turn brings other difficulties such as ease of transportation of materials to the build site and connection to the power grid. Furthermore locations with the highest winds are usually costal areas. Building offshore wind turbines, although does not require any land space, is very expensive to build due to the extra structural reinforcements needed to build standing structure in the ocean.

Many people also feel that the countryside should not be spoilt by building large structures would reduce the aesthetic appeal of the environment. Conservationists also oppose the building of wind farms for fear that they may kill of interfere with wild life such as migratory routes of birds.

Wind turbines, depending on perspective, are noisy. Each turbine generates about the same level of noise as a car travelling at approximately 70 miles per hour. Therefore if there are homes located near the wind turbine, residents may be disturbed by the noise generated by the wind turbines.

During the manufacture of wind turbines, pollution is also produced in the form of energy consumed for fabrication of materials and pollution produced by vehicles used during the transportation and building of the turbines. Therefore it cannot be said that wind power produces no pollution at all.

Finally, if an entire community’s needs were to be provided by a single wind farm, the wind farm itself would have to be extremely big considering that the largest turbines available today would only be able to power just under 500 homes. If a town or city of 100, 000 homes were to run on solely wind power, then a farm of almost 200 turbines would be needed. Taking the distance needed between each turbine, then an immense area of land would be needed just to power this town.

After considering both advantages and disadvantages of wind turbines, I have come to the conclusion that although it is impractical and unrealistic to supply the entire world’s power with wind power, it is a highly efficient way of harnessing “free” energy from the environment. If as much available space as possible were to be used as wind farms, coupled with other renewable energy sources such as solar, bio-fuels, and hydro-electric power were used to substitute fossil fuels whenever possible, then the impact on the environment would be greatly lessened. This would greatly reduce the usage of fossil fuels, thus giving researches more time to come up with solutions to the worlds energy needs without relying on fossil fuels which will eventually run out and also how to reduce the load of burning fossil fuels on the environment.