The Basics of How The Wind Can Create Electricity
Wind power is one of the greenest sources of clean energy there is. But, exactly how does the wind create electricity to heat and cool our homes, run our appliances, lights and everything else? The basic way in which wind turbines work is really pretty simple, although it’s not quite as simple as it sounds.
The propellers on a wind turbine create resistance for the wind and cause it to slow down. The wind begins to move around the propellers causing them to turn. The shaft that the propeller is attached to starts to spin inside a generator to produce electricity. As the shaft spins, magnets inside the generator start to move around a wire forcing the electrons to move through the electrical wire.
Generally, there is some type of storage bank that consists of batteries that stores the electricity until it’s ready to be used. A dump load can be used to keep the energy from being wasted when the batteries become full. A dump load can divert excess energy to heat water, run lights or what ever else you want to use.
Now you have all this clean energy stored in batteries, but you can’t just simply use it straight from a battery. A household current is different than the type of energy from a battery, it must be passed through an inverter. Basically, the inverter converts or transforms the wind energy into usable energy for anything that uses electricity.