Wind Power.

This is a project on wind power. Wind is a renewable source of power with potential in the production of electricity in the U.K, but fluctuating wind currents make it unreliable. We asked ourselves how it works and what it does.

Wind Turbines

Wind turbines are very useful and are powered by the wind. The process of collecting the energy follows: as the wind turns the blades then the blades activate the dynamo inside that really makes the electricity. As you can imagine a field of dynamos all going as fast as they can would be very noisy. As we all know wind is a renewable source of power and because it doesn't burn fuels it is environmentally friendly.

Waves possess great energy. Experiments with various different designs of generator have proved that waves can provide electricity. However, there are problems in developing and building wave powered generators which are both cheap and efficient, as they must be strong enough to cope with storms while being light enough to work with small waves. The drawback is that these schemes affect the habitat of birds and fish because they alter the tidal currents.

The drawbacks of TIDAL and WAVE power are that the alter of the tidal currents affect the habitat of the seabirds in the area also the ...

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The drawbacks of TIDAL and WAVE power are that the alter of the tidal currents affect the habitat of the seabirds in the area also the fish are affected by the change in the tidal currents. Also the tidal and wave power stations can only produce ten hours of power in one day of twenty-four hours so they would have to generate the other fourteen hours of power another way which may be quite expensive. But there are also good points about tidal and wave power. One good point is that the power produced is cheap. Also, making the power does not pollute the environment in the same ways that fossil fuels do.

The Importance of Waves -

They contribute energy to the coast. They're created by the transfer of energy from the wind to the sea, blowing over the surface. The wind blowing over the smooth water surface creates ripples that grow into waves as the frictional drag increases. As the winds energy grows so does the height. The wave height is the difference between the trough and the crest.
Example - The wind speed is 50km, the time is 30 hours and it's open sea, the waves will be 6m high. Waves resulting from local winds and travelling from local distance will not develop to their full height.
Example - Dover and France are 40km apart so these waves are Sea Waves. This is an insufficient distance for the wind to develop waves to their full height.
Waves formed by winds blowing over large distances are called Swell Waves. The length of open sea over which the wind blows to generate waves is the Fetch. This along with velocity and period of time during which the wind has blown determines the waves energy.