Links to WindEnergy / SolarEnergy - providing Wind Energy Pros and Cons

Advantages and Challenges of WindEnergy

Windenergy offers many advantages, which explains why it's the fastest-growing energy source in the world. Research efforts are aimed at addressing the challenges to greater use of windenergy.

Advantages

Windenergy is fueled by the wind, so it's a clean fuel source. Windenergy doesn't pollute the air like power plants that rely on combustion of fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas. Windpower turbines don't produce atmospheric emissions that cause acid rain or greenhouse gasses.

Windenergy is a domestic source of energy, produced in the United States. The nation's wind supply is abundant.

Windenergy relies on the renewable power of the wind, which can't be used up. Wind is actually a form of solarenergy; winds are caused by the heating of the atmosphere by the sun, the rotation of the earth, and the earth's surface irregularities.

Windenergy is one of the lowest-priced renewable energy technologies available today, costing between 4 and 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending upon the wind resource and project financing of the particular project.

Windpower turbines can be built on farms or ranches, thus benefiting the economy in rural areas, where most of the best wind sites are found. Farmers and ranchers can continue to work the land because the wind turbines use only a fraction of the land. Windpowered generator plant owners make rent payments to the farmer or rancher for the use of the land.

Challenges

Windenergy must compete with conventional generation sources on a cost basis. Depending on how energetic a wind site is, the wind farm may or may not be cost competitive. Even though the cost of 

wind power has decreased dramatically in the past 10 years, the technology requires a higher initial investment than fossil-fueled generators.

Good wind sites are often located in remote locations, far from cities where the electricity is needed. Transmission lines must be built to bring the electricity from the wind farm to the city.

Wind resource development may compete with other uses for the land and those alternative uses may be more highly valued than electricity generation.

Although windpower generation plants have relatively little impact on the environment compared to other conventional power plants, there is some concern over the noise produced by the rotor blades, aesthetic (visual) impacts, and sometimes birds have been killed by flying into the rotors. Most of these problems have been resolved or greatly reduced through technological development or by properly siting wind plants.

If you would like the instruction on how to build and produce your own residential windpower then click on the links provided below. Review the content and see which system is best for you and start making your own residential windpower with a homemade wind turbine this weekend.