You can expect the average height of wind turbine towers to be between 267 and 305 feet tall. Before you can climb the tower you have to turn the generator into service mode on the control panel. Most of the ladders are enclosed within the tower and are made from aluminum. When you climb up the ladder you have to have the safety harness secured on to you. As a technician you have to understand a lot of mechanics, you are also required to understand electricity in its most basic form.

As far as studying is concerned, it is recommended that you have a two year associates degree. That cover a lot of fields including controllers you can program, hydraulics, digital electronics, pneumatics and also take basic maintenance classes. You should also take courses in technical writing and communications. Your internship  is a requirement and can be as much as 240 hours. This is done to allow each student to prove their abilities to the companies they want to eventually work for.

It is not surprising to even get a job offer from a company at the end of your internship, so you are more motivated to complete the program. The United States is planning to make wind energy provide 20% of the power in the country by the year 2025, this will create a lot of jobs. They believe that by the year 2015, only 50% of the required workforce will be fully trained and ready to take on this job.

You can expect to earn between $45,000 and $60,000 per year, this is the entry minimum wage with a two year associate degree. If you are open to traveling and doing retro fittings plus construction you can add another $45K to $60K/year to your salary. One of the benefits of this job is you can walk around proud of the job you do as you are helping your community and the environment too. This is accomplished by just doing your job every single day.

Some colleges that train Wind Turbine Technicians are Holland College, Northern Lights College, Highland Community College and Dabney Lancaster Community College.

These wind farm turbines can produce as much as 96 Megawatts per turbine and depending on the location, they can be spread out to cover a large area. The towers themselves can be as high as 80 meters (about 240 feet). This can be equated to the size of a twenty storey building. Each of the three blades will be about 45 meters in length which is more than half the height from the ground.

Setting up a wind farm is a very expensive venture. For example a 32 wind turbine farm in Canada just outside of Moncton, New Brunswick cost more than 170 million dollars. This was the first commercial wind farm set up in July of 2009 in this province. It is estimated that this project alone will generate over 280, 000 Mega Watts every single year. That is enough electricity to power 17,000 homes for a period of one year.

So as you can imagine, one wind farm generator can be very expensive to set up. However it pays of in the long run because wind is a renewable energy. There will be more costs as far as maintaining the equipment is concerned but that is nothing compared to the long term benefits of setting up a wind farm. It is therefore sad to hear that some communities are fighting their governments and trying to prevent them from setting up these farms.

There is a motor fitted into the turbine’s base and its job is to make sure that the rotor is facing the wind at all times. The AREVA M5000 5 Megawatt Offshore Wind Turbine has a tower which is 130 meters long and the wind turbines blades are 56.6 meters in length. These blades are super aerodynamic, so they are able to perform and produce high yield energy levels without making a lot of noise. They are made of glass fibre and a carbon fibre too.

There are three blades and each one has an in built electrical control system that allows each one to have their pitch angle easily adjusted. There is a system of ball bearings that is integrated into the hub. This protects them from weather elements. The motor has what is called Azimuth drive, and this helps turn the turbine to face the wind. the AREVA system comprises of one rotar bearing that is attached to a one stage gear box and a medium speed generator. This set up helps increase the blade’s rotation speed and is derived from conventional and fearless turbines often referred to as direct drive turbines.

A frequency generator is also installed in the generator. Its job is to allow variable rotation speeds of the gears to allow for optimum electrical efficiency rates. In the base of each tower you have all the equipment that is needed to convert wind energy into electricity including the output connection to the supply network. There is a power converter and transformer which produces the electricity. An air treatment system is also housed in there and it removes salt particles and humidity from the air. This purified air is pumped into the tower to produce an over pressure environment.

The AREVA M5000 was actually the first turbine that has been specifically designed for use on large scale offshore wind farms. Just like the one in the North Sea in Germany known as the ALPHA VENTUS Offshore Wind Park.

Watch the video below to see all the elements in action…

Wind powered turbine power generators are available from many sources but they are unfortunately expensive. A lower cost wind powered generator would solve this problem for many power consumers who would like to generate all or part of the power they consume. Not only does this help mother earth but the free power from the wind is a money saver into the bargain. Plans for building a low cost wind turbine from auto parts,wood and a few odds and ends are readily available.

A small wind power generator can be mounted on the roof of a home or other building or can be free standing with its own support. Several can be built to supply all the power requirements of the home or business and excess power produced can be sold to the local power company in many areas. This is a wonderful business opportunity for anyone who can build these wind turbines at low cost and sell them to people who do not have the time or skill to build their own.

Any cottage,farm or even city home can be powered by electricity generated by the wind. Those who live far from a power line need not be without power. Wind power is one of the green forms of power generation which does no harm to our environment. It is in fact the cleanest form of power generation which can be harnessed at reasonable cost. Solar panels are also very “clean” but they are costly and have low power output.

The average person,who has some experience with a home workshop,can easily build wind turbines from new or used auto parts,some wood and simple tools. Several can be built for the cost of one commercially produced model. There is a ready market for these since many consumers want to install them to generate all or part of their power supply. Plans with instructions and illustrations are readily available for anyone who wants to start in this business,in their home workshop,or even to make a turbine or several for their own use. Why not get into this business now? The time is certainly ripe for any product which will help preserve the environment and save money at the same time.

Interested in a wind turbine business,or in making them for your own use? More information on this great opportunity to make low cost wind power generators in your home workshop can be found at http://www.greenwindpowerturbine.com

WIND TURBINES

About the Author

John Mowatt is a retired business man who is interested in wind power as a means of producing clean “green” electricity. He has researched means of building wind powered generator turbines at low cost and has found that this is a great business opportunity.

However, are you aware that wind generators are very difficult to actually get up and running. There is five major things that we should address when it comes to dealing with wind turbine efficiency. These are the actual wind power, the altitude, any obstructions, the aerodynamics of your wind turbine blades as well as the temperature of the air.

Let us look at wind power first. There is a special formula that involves P = Wind Power, V = Wind Speed & F = Wind Force. So when put together P = kVF and in this case k is a constant. Basically what this means is you want a faster wind speed and a stronger wind force in order to generate more wind power from your wind generator. Areas have different rates of wind, so it is vital that the relationship between the speed of the wind and the amount of power being produced is understood.

The second factor is altitude. For this the best places to set your wind turbine will be on higher altitudes. They tend to have faster wind speeds due to varying factors in the atmosphere. Elevated areas will also have less obstructions in the path of the wind in terms of hills, trees or even buildings. It has been calculated that you can get a 12% increase in wind speed if you double the distance from the ground to your turbines.

The third factor is obstuctions. When you are surrounded by trees, hills, buildings or mountains your wind speed is much slower. This is because there is some friction generated that actually restricts your free air flow. If you are building a wind farm it maybe wise to evaluate the speed at one site for a whole year just to make sure that it is a good site to sit your turbines.

The fourth factor is blade areodynamics. Essentially your blades should be well designed and shaped so that they allow for maximum efficiency. Each airfoil will have its lift determined by the angle it has with your wind direction, also known as the angle of attack. The larger the angle of attack the more turbulence generated by the blades. You will also lose lift and the drag will increase too.

Lastly but not least, is the fifth factor which is air temperature. The power generated by your wind generator increases by up to 16% if the temperature drops from +20 degrees to – 20 degrees at any wind speed rate. This is because colder air tends to be more dense and ultimately increases the power being produced by the turbine.

There you have it a five factors that will affect the efficiency of your wind turbines. All of these five should be considered whenever a new generator is being installed into an area. This will ensure that you will get the maximum amount of wind power from your new installation.

It was also noticed that smaller blades will not spin faster, this just defies the laws of physics. It does not matter the shape of the blades, it will never slice through the air. If smaller blades where more efficient we would see them on all those huge wind generators we see in our growing wind farms.

The second thing  they looked at was the number of blades that each wind generator should have. It has been discovered that four to five configurations of blades do not help anything. They are actually less efficient than the tradition three bladed wind generator. Again we should look at the wind generators on the world’s growing wind farms, you will notice they all have a three blade configuration. If more provided more power, I am sure all these gigantic wind generators would have four or five blade configurations.

What actually happens is that any blade over the third one actually slows down the wind turbine by causing turbulence. The wind turbine with more blades may initially have a slower start up speed than the three bladed one, but as soon as it starts up, it will create a considerable amount of turbulence that your wind generator does not really benefit from. The other blades will then waste their energy on trying to overcome the turbulence.

So there you go, if you are planning on building your own generator at home. You now know that you only require three wind generator blades, any more than that will not generator more wind energy. They will instead cost you more in the long run. If you want a good blade for your generator, you should purchase the longest one you can afford. It does not matter if it is made of aluminum or steel the longest one will generate more wind power for you.

However now, a US company is offering a propellor free personal windmill, that can be set up in a city or surburb. They call it the Wind Spire. It can generate 25% to 30% of the power in your house. The 3kw version which is twice the width and the same height will generate 100% of your households power requirements.

This new generator was included in a green exhibit at the United States botanical garden located in Washington. They designed it from looking at an old version almost three thousand year old that was found in Egypt and utilized for grinding wheat. Independant tests have been conducted in Utah to show that this type of wind turbine can compete with the ones found on traditional wind farms with the huge blades.

The wind blades of the larger turbines are infamous for killing birds and bats. This is because their speeds are usually way faster than the speed of the wind, and this also means that they tend to produce more noise. The Wind Spire vertical axis wind generator however, is very silent and does not pose too much of a threat to birds. It has been designed to spin at only two and a half times the speed of wind so it is always visible to birds at all times.

The company has started installing the 9m tall devices which can plug into household power and customers can see on their home computers how much electricity they are getting from the wind turbine. It is equipped with a wireless transmitter which tells how much power is being produced and how fast the wind is blowing. All of this information is relayed to your home computer.

For More information  visit: http://windspireenergy.com/

This type of generator is from the vertical axis wind turbine family. It consists of a rotor assembly that has more than two hundred disks stacked on top of each other with a narrow two millimeter gap in between each one of them. On the circumference of the rotors is a bunch of twisted blades made of airfoil, whose sole purpose is to redirect the airflow to the surface of the blades.

They have designed this generator to harness wind energy to the maximum possible extent. There are many different ways that this assembly produces wind energy from the wind. The first way is the most common way which is the standard way in most generators. It involves the simple lift and drag via the blades on the circumference of the rotor. The other way is through adhesion, which is when the air enters the gaps between the disks and adheres itself to the surface. This ultimately increases the rotation of the main rotor.

The Tesnic home wind generator is very small and compact, which means you can easily install it on top of your house, on your roof. A lot of research and development hours have gone into the design of this type of generator, in order to make it super efficient. It does not hurt to know that this is a very affordable wind turbine for any household.

If you are familiar with how other charge controllers work, like those for solar panels for example. You would know that they simply monitor the battery voltage and once the batteries are fully charged, the controller shorts the panels. This type of device does not work for wind generators, because they could burn out your controller or even destroy your generator.

Included with every Whisper is the new Whisper Controller. The Whisper Controller includes a diversion load to ensure quiet safe operation of your wind turbine when the batteries are charged.

It installs in minutes and it protects both your wind turbine and battery. The Whisper Controller fits easily inside your battery room. Add the optional LCD display and you will instantly receive real time data on the performance of your Whisper 100.

The display can be mounted on the controller or up to 1000 (300 meters) away letting you know what is happening. You can even add an anemometer to your controller and now you can measure wind speed and compare it to the output to make sure you are getting the most from your Whisper 100.

You maybe thinking why not just unplug the batteries once they are fully charged? Well, that will not work either because most wind generators will overload when they have no load and then go on to possibly damage the generators. This happened to a friend of mine recently, and he was not amused by this at all.

So this leaves installing a wind generator charge controller as your only plausible option. What this does is allow the batteries to fully charge, and the automatically switch to an alternate load that can continue to use the power being generated by the wind.

Some of the things you can use the extra energy include heating your water, powering your household refrigerator or even just using it for lighting the home. Wind generator charge controllers are available in different voltages such as 12V, 24V, and 36V to suit any model wind generator.

No wind generator installation could work well without a controller, your are doomed to mess up your own set up. This may result in you having to invest in a whole new generator, costing you more than it should have. So whatever you do make sure you have purchased a charge controller for your whole installation.

You can purchase a wind generator charge controller online here

What do you know about this topic? If you are intrigued by many claims that place high regard on this subject, you can also start your research to know more about it. You can look into various websites that discuss the topic. It will be ideal to see pictures or illustrations of how everything works to give you better idea about the whole process. You can also read books that pertain to this subject. These contain deeper studies that have been conducted by professionals to give average people basic knowledge about the topic.

To help you with your learning venture, here are some quick facts about this energy source that is wind power.

Kinetic energy is formed when air moves that causes wind. This is the kind of energy that is created when mass is in motion. The kinetic energy coming from the wind can be captured using the right technology developed by humans. The captured energy can then be converted into various forms of energy, including mechanical power and electricity. During the early years of its development, people in EuropeChina used windmills to capture the energy from the wind and convert it to power up grind grain and to be able to pump water. As of today, the more advanced wind turbines can be used as a stand alone to power up utilities and machines or can be used to support other systems like the solar power to create more energy.

The source of wind power is natural, clean and inexhaustible. This can actually be used for a long term goal for these reasons. This is also safe for the environment because not only this is clean, it also doesn’t cause pollution to soil, air and water. It doesn’t create wastes that are hard to manage like the wastes being created by nuclear power.

3. The location is the main problem that is usually encountered by those who want to build huge project to set up machineries for wind power. This must be done on areas that have large tracts of land. This can also be created along coastlines or in places where the wind movement is at its full force. These areas are usually devoted to the development of agriculture and urban growth and development.

4. Through time, people will realize how cost-efficient this project can become. There are various wind power designs that are continuously being developed to make the project more feasible as years pass by.