Читать книгу The Self-Sufficiency Handbook - Alan Bridgewater - Страница 64

We all know about traditional wind turbines. The wind blows, the sails go around, and the turning horizontal pivotal action is converted by means of gears, wheels, and rods to vertical action to turn huge flat stones to grind corn or to turn a pivot that turns a crankshaft that sets a water pump in motion. There are all sorts of complicated head-and-axis design options: canvas sails on a horizontal axis, cylindrical rotors on a vertical axis, vertical rotor blades on a vertical axis, blades like a child’s wind turbine toy on a horizontal axis, and so on.

Most modern, high-tech wind generators have two, three, or five blades or propellers of an airfoil section on a horizontal axis—a bit like an old airplane. Most machines are mounted on a pole or tower and designed in such a way that a mechanical or electronic governor comes into action and applies a brake when the machine reaches a designated top wind speed. The wind blows over the blades, causing them to rotate; the prop spins on a horizontal axis and turns a shaft; the shaft turns inside the generator; the generator converts the turning motion into electricity; and, finally, the resultant electricity is either stored in batteries and converted by means of an inverter to standard AC supply or fed into the public power grid.