Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 1
Wei Tong
Kollmorgen Corporation, Virginia, USA.
The rising concerns over global warming, environmental pollution, and energy
security have increased interest in developing renewable and environmentally
friendly energy sources such as wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal, hydrogen,
and biomass as the replacements for fossil fuels. Wind energy can provide suit-
able solutions to the global climate change and energy crisis. The utilization of
wind power essentially eliminates emissions of CO
2
, SO
2
, NO
x
and other harmful
wastes as in traditional coal-fuel power plants or radioactive wastes in nuclear
power plants. By further diversifying the energy supply, wind energy dramatically
reduces the dependence on fossil fuels that are subject to price and supply insta-
bility, thus strengthening global energy security. During the recent three decades,
tremendous growth in wind power has been seen all over the world. In 2009,
the global annual installed wind generation capacity reached a record-breaking
37 GW, bringing the world total wind capacity to 158 GW. As the most promising
renewable, clean, and reliable energy source, wind power is highly expected to
take a much higher portion in power generation in the coming decades.
The purpose of this chapter is to acquaint the reader with the fundamentals of
wind energy and modern wind turbine design, as well as some insights concerning
wind power generation.
1 Wind energy
Wind energy is a converted form of solar energy which is produced by the nuclear
fusion of hydrogen (H) into helium (He) in its core. The H
He fusion process
creates heat and electromagnetic radiation streams out from the sun into space
in all directions. Though only a small portion of solar radiation is intercepted by
the earth, it provides almost all of earth's energy needs.
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