Renewable Resources for Electricity Essay

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Power of the Wind

The chosen renewable source discussed in this assignment is wind power, or energy produced from the wind. The location for this source is California and some of the cities in the Bay Area that are near some of the more substantial wind harnessing facilities in the state. A good example of one of these cities includes San Ramon. The crux of wind power in California is that it is harnessed via the means of wind mills and/or turbines, which are able to convert the motion of the wind into various forms of electricity. As such, wind power is an alternative to other means of utilizing electricity. Examples of other means of utilizing electricity from nonrenewable sources include the deployment of gasoline (which stems from oil) to provide electricity as a means of powering automobiles. One of the things that is unique about wind power is that not only is it natural, but it comes in great abundance throughout the natural world. The wind is almost always blowing in some places -- it is virtually impossible to foresee a situation in which there is all of a sudden no wind power. In this respect wind power is extremely sustainable and provides an excellent alternative to the utilization of non-renewable sources of energy -- particularly those which are converted into electricity.

Although the power of the wind is found in abundance throughout the world, there are still some limitations to utilizing this power in a specific location such as San Ramon, California. Firstly, although there are rarely instances in which there is no wind whatsoever, it is not inconceivable that instances might arise in which the amount of wind is so paltry that it cannot generate a sufficient amount of electricity for its intended purposes. It is not uncommon, for instance, for one to drive past the plethora of windmills and turbines just outside the city of San Ramon and see a number of these instruments not moving or rotating due to insufficient amounts of wind -- at that particular point in time. Thus, the efficiency of wind power is inconsistent, and certainly could stand improving.

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Although the wind is almost always present, its presence is far from constant. Therefore, the type of applications that are utilizing wind power are necessarily limited by the fact that the wind does not always blow at a constant rate and from a constant position which benefits mechanisms designed to harness the wind. It is better to use wind power for proverbial 'back end' applications that rely on less power than other applications that require a constancy that the wind simply cannot provide. Finally, the leveraging of mechanical constructs to capitalize on the power of wind may conflict with the natural environments and ecosystems for any number of nature's creatures.

Although the use of windmills and wind power dates back to ancient times, California has begun to harness wind power in earnest since the early 1980's. The region was so successful in this endeavor that by the midway point of the 1990s it was world renowned for its generation of power through the wind; the majority of the world's wind power was created in California at this point. The basic way that California has been ble to harness the power of the wind so effectively pertains to the notion of wind farms, which are large tracts of land that dedicated to wind power. These tracts most eminently contain turbines which are the initiating point for the process of taking the kinetic motion of the wind and transforming it to electricity. Prior to the conversion to electricity, the power of the wind is converted to mechanical energy. Wind farms also contain stations that connect the farms to utility power grids, which is where the specific application of the wind-based electricity is decided. Varieties of applications include distributed scale applications and utility-scale applications. The latter typically has greater demands for electricity than the former does. Wind farms also contain facilities for the maintenance and control of the wind power, as….....

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