Advantages and Disadvantages of Wind Energy

The conversion of wind energy to various other useful forms, like electricity, is known as wind power. Wind energy is converted into these forms using wind turbines. Wind energy can be converted into electrical energy by the use of a electrical generator.

The first use of wind energy was through wind mills. Wind mills had engines which used to produce energy using wind. This energy was usually used in rural and agricultural areas for grinding, pumping, hammering and various farm needs. Even today, wind energy is used in large scale wind farms to provide electricity to rural areas and other far reaching locations.

Wind energy is being used extensively in areas like Denmark, Germany, Spain, India and in some areas of the United States of America. It is one of the largest forms of Green Energy used in the world today. Wind Energy is highly practical in places where the wind speed is 10 mph.

Advantages
One of the greatest advantages of Wind Energy is that it is ample. Secondly, wind energy is renewable. Some other advantages of Wind Energy are that it is widely distributed, cheap, and also reducing toxic gas emissions. Wind Energy is also advantageous over traditional methods of creating energy, in the sense that it is getting cheaper and cheaper to produce wind energy. Wind Energy may soon be the cheapest way to produce energy on a large scale.

The cost of producing wind energy has come down by at least eighty percent since the eighties. Along with economy, Wind Energy is also said to diminish the greenhouse effect.

Also, wind energy generates no pollution. Wind Energy is also a more permanent type of energy. The wind will exist till the time the sun exists, which is roughly another four billion years. Theoretically, if all the wind power available to humankind is harnessed, there can be ten times of energy we use, readily available.

One other advantage of wind energy that it is readily available around the globe, and therefore there would be no need of dependence for energy for any country. Wind energy may be the answer to the globe's question of energy in the face of the rising petroleum and gas prices.

Disadvantages
However, there are some disadvantages for wind energy, which may put a dampener in its popularity. Though the costs of creating wind energy is going down, even today a large number of turbines have to be built to generate a proper amount of wind energy. Though wind power is non-polluting, the turbines may create a lot of noise, which indirectly contributes to noise pollution.

Wind can never be predicted.Even the most advanced machinery may come out a cropper while predicting weather and wind conditions. Since wind energy will require knowledge of the weather and wind conditions on long term basis, it may be a bit impractical. Therefore, in areas where a large amount of wind energy is needed, one cannot depend completely on wind.

Many potential wind farms, places where wind energy can be produced on a large scale, are far away from places for which wind energy is best suited. Therefore, the economical nature of wind energy may take a beating in terms of costs of new substations and transmission lines.

Wind Energy is non-dispatchable. This may also put a spanner in depending upon wind power as a primary energy supplier. Wind energy depends upon the wind in an area and therefore is a variable source of energy. The amount of wind supplied to a place and the amount of energy produced from it will depend on various factors like wind speeds and the turbine characteristics. Some critics also wonder whether wind energy can be used in areas of high demand.