Introduction to wind turbines

To harness the force of the wind a converter (the rotor blades) is required to turn the kinetic energy of the wind into operational energy) (mechanical energy) and this into electricity and/or heat. The rotor blades have aerodynamic shapes, to enable them to rotate efhciently, and thus extract a power of  

There are practical hmits to the amount of power that can be extracted from wind streams. Some of these limits relate to the design of the wind devices and others to the characteristics of the resource. 

The onshore wind turbine blades and the hubs are currently supported on a steel column, although there are examples where reinforced concrete material has been used (see Chapter 20, Section 20.5.6). The production area of the turbines is generally referred to as a wind farm, which is a group of wind turbines in the same location. A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines, which could cover an area of hundreds of square kilometres, but generally an onshore wind farm of 20 

Individual onshore turbines are interconnected with a medium voltage (usually 34.5 kV) power collection system and communications network by underground cables. At a substation, the medium-voltage electrical current is increased in voltage via a transformer for connection to the high-voltage National Grid system. 

The composite blades of the turbine will be discussed in Chapter 20, Section 20.5.5. 

---