Where does Wind Energy come from?

Most of the renewable energies come from the sun. The sun radiates 174,423,000,000,000 kilowatt hours of energy to the earth per hour. In other words, the earth receives 1.74 x 10 17 watts of power.

About 1 to 2 per cent of the energy coming from the sun is converted into wind energy. That is about 50 to 100 times more than the energy converted into biomass by all plants on earth.

Hot air is lighter than cold air and will rise into the sky until it reaches approximately 10 km (6 miles) altitude and will spread to the North and the South. If the globe did not rotate, the air would simply arrive at the North Pole and the South Pole, sink down, and return to the equator.

Wind, in combination with other factors such as hills, mountains, threes, buildings, etc are help to determine the particular characteristics of the wind in a specific location. It’s because the air has mass that the air in movement carries kinetic energy. A wind turbine converts this energy into electricity. The energy content of a determined volume of wind it’s in ratio to its square speed. In addition, when duplicating, the wind speed will allow that twice the air volume goes through the turbine in the same amount of time, resulting in an eight times increase of the generated power. This means that just with a slight increase in the speed of wind significant increases for the energy production may come.

Ek = ½ m•v2

The Amount of Kinetic Energy (Ek) equals half of the product from its (m) total and 2 times its speed (v).

P ~ v3

The amount of power (p) generated by the wind is proportional to the cube of its speed (v).