Introduction to Wind Power Turbines

A wind turbine, also known as a wind power converter, is a device that converts the kinetic power of wind into electrical power. It is essentially a reverse electric fan. Instead of using electricity to generate wind, wind turbines use wind power to generate electricity.

When the wind is strong enough, the blades of the rotating wind turbine can be blown. The wind turbine blades are connected to the generator by means of a low-speed shaft, a gearbox and a high-speed shaft.

As early as 3000 BC, in Egypt, people used wind power for the first time in the form of sailboats. The sail captures the power of the wind to make the boat travel on the water. 

The earliest windmills that used to grind grain appeared in Babylon in 2000 BC or Ancient Persia in 200 BC. These early equipment consisted of one or more vertically installed wooden beams, and there is a knife grinder at the bottom of the wooden beams, which attached to a rotating shaft that turns with the wind. The concept of using wind power to grind grain quickly spread throughout the Middle East and was widely used before the first windmill appeared in Europe. From the 11th century AD, European Crusaders brought this concept home, and the Dutch windmill that we are familiar with was born.

On the top of the tower, people will enter the engine compartment, which is a streamlined shell containing the internal components of the wind turbine. The appearance of engine compartment looks like a square box and is located at the top of the tower.

The engine compartment provides protection for important internal components of the wind turbine. These components include generators, gearboxes, and low-speed and high-speed shafts.

Paddle act as wind barriers. When the wind forces the blades to move, paddle will transferred some power to the rotor.

And the wind turbine shaft is connected to the center of the rotor. When the rotor rotates, the shaft also rotates. In this way, the rotor transfers its mechanical and rotational power to the shaft, and then the shaft enters the generator at the other end.

Now that the components of a wind turbine are introduced, the passage will demonstrate how the wind turbine operates and generates electricity. The process of generating electricity is:

Imitating the design of a jet engines, wind turbines overcome a major defect existing in traditional wind turbines. Wind turbines are covered with shields around the blades to guide air through the blades and accelerate them, which increases electricity production. Normally, when the wind passes through the turbine, almost half of the air stays around the blades instead of passing through them all, and therefore, some of the wind power is lost. Traditional wind turbines can only use up to 59.3% of the wind power, a value is called the Betz limit.

Because the wind power is unstable, the output of the wind power generator is 13-25V alternating current, which must be rectified by the charger and stored in storage battery, so that the electrical power generated by the wind power generator becomes chemical power. Only after an inverter power supply with a protection circuit converts the chemical power in the battery into standard AC 220V power, can the power be safely used.

The use of wind turbines is to continuously convert wind power into standard commercial electricity used by our families. It is a great way to cut cost. The annual electricity consumption of a family only costs 20 yuan for battery fluid. The performance of wind turbines has been greatly improved compared to a few years ago. It was only used in a few remote areas in the past. If a 15W light bulb is directly connected to wind turbines, the light bulb can be damaged because it turned on and off very often. However, due to technological progress and the use of advanced chargers and inverters, wind power generation has become a small high-tech system, and can replace normal mains power under certain conditions.