Wind power

Wind power

Wind power is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, produces no greenhouse gas emissions during operation and uses little land. Almost all large wind turbines have the same design a horizontal axis wind turbine having an upwind rotor with three blades, attached to a nacelle on top of a tall tubular tower.

More and more attention have been paid on wind power. Worldwide there are now over two hundred thousand wind turbines operating, with a total nameplate capacity of 238,351 MW as of end 2011. The European Union alone passed some 100,000 MW nameplate capacity in September 2012, while the United States surpassed 50,000 MW in August 2012 and China passed 50,000 MW the same month. Medium and large-sized groups of wind power generator are under operation in land and offshore over 40 countries. The growth of wind-generated electricity is higher than that of other sources continues.

There're three modes of wind-generated electricity operation, i.e.

Independent operation
Small-sized wind power generator, storage battery reserves energy, can supply electricity to one or several households when there's no wind.

Combined operation
Wind power generator combines diesel generator to supply electric power to an organization, a village or an island.

Grid-connected operation
Tens or even hundreds of wind generators are installed on one site that supply power to grid. This is the trend of wind power development.

In 2010, more than half of all new wind power was added outside of the traditional markets in Europe and North America. This was largely from new construction in China, which accounted for nearly half the new wind installations. China has been rapidly expanding its wind installations in the late 2000s and passed the U.S. in 2010 to become the world leader.