Читать книгу Wind Power Basics - Dan Chiras - Страница 20

Although residential wind turbines and their energy source, the wind, have a few downsides, wind energy is an abundant and renewable resource. We won’t run out of wind for the foreseeable future, unlike oil and natural gas.

Small-scale wind energy could also help decrease our reliance on declining and costly supplies of oil — if electricity generated by wind is used to power electric or plug-in electric hybrid cars and trucks, displacing gasoline, which is refined from oil.

Wind energy can also play a meaningful role in offsetting declining US natural gas supplies. In the United States, approximately 18 percent of all electricity is currently generated by natural gas, according to the US Department of Energy. As supplies decline, wind could help ease the crunch, supplying a growing percentage of our nation’s electricity.

Wind could even eventually reduce our dependence on nuclear power as well. In the United States, nuclear power plants generate about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. Although wind energy does have its impacts, it is a relatively benign technology compared to conventional sources of electricity. It could help all countries create cleaner and safer energy at a fraction of the environmental cost of conventional electrical energy production. Wind energy can help nations reduce global warming and devastating changes in our climate. Wind can also help homeowners and businesses do their part in solving other costly environmental problems such as acid rain.

Another benefit of wind energy is that, unlike oil, coal and nuclear energy, the wind is not owned by major energy companies or controlled by foreign nations. An increasing reliance on wind energy could therefore ease international political tension. Reducing our reliance on Middle Eastern oil could reduce costly military operations aimed, in part, at stabilizing a region where the largest oil reserves reside.

Wind is also a free resource. The cost of wind is not subject to price increases. A wind- and solar-powered future might be one subject to less inflation. This is not to say that wind energy will be free of price increases. While the fuel itself (the wind) is free, the price of wind generators is likely to increase. That’s because it takes energy to extract and process minerals to make the steel and copper needed for wind turbines and towers. It also takes energy to make turbines and towers and ship and install them. As the price of conventional fuels and raw materials increases, the cost of wind energy also will go up.

Yet another advantage of wind-generated electricity is that it uses existing infrastructure, the electrical grid, and existing technologies. A transition to wind energy could occur fairly seamlessly.

Thanks to generous tax credits and other financial incentives, individuals in rural areas with good wind resources can meet all or part of their energy needs at rates that are often competitive with conventional sources. In remote locations, wind or wind and solar electric hybrid systems can be cheaper than conventional power, which requires the installation of costly electric lines that transport electricity from power plants to end users.

Fig. 1.5: Plug-In Hybrid. Electric cars and plug-in hybrids like the one shown here are the most promising automobile technologies on the horizon. They could be powered by electricity from the Sun and wind.