Humankind has been using wind energy for millennia. Pumping water, grinding grain, and hanging wet clothes out to dry. These are just a few examples of wind energy in use.
Current uses of wind energy are, in some cases, not much different from the ancient ways. Some grain grinding is still done with a stone mill pushed by the energy of wind. Water pumping, like the ancient Zoroastrians a thousand years ago, is still going on in the Fertile Crescent. Or in Netherlands, where wind powers water pumps for hundrends years! And who would not find a flag looking impressive when flapping in the wind.
Unstoppable wind power: Our legacy from the past
The advantages of using wind energy are still the same like the ones our ancestors enjoyed; wind is free and abundant. Wind power is relatively easy to harness, just build sails on ships or wings of a windmill.
But some of the modern uses of wind energy deliver advantages that our ancestors did not know about. Wind energy does not cause any pollution, and the kinetic energy of the wind can be converted into electricity and stored for later use.
Who takes advantage of this awesome source?
Regions that use wind energy a great deal include Europe. Some of the countries with the most wind turbines are Holland, Germany, Denmark, and Spain. The Germans build towers for their wind turbines that are ninety-eight meters high!
But that does not mean that they other countries do not want to beat their record. Australia has plans for a tower that tops one thousand meters! As a wise man once said,
“Putting a wind turbine on a short tower is like mounting solar panels in the shade.”
Wind energy uses are not nearly as plentiful as they could be. Uses for wind energy are subsidized in much of Europe. In the United States, owners of renewable energy sources can get credits for their excess energy production, if they send it to the grid.
In Denmark and Germany, any excess electricity is supplied to the national grid and owners even get paid a fair market value for it.
That would go a long way to explaining all the small wind turbines that have popped up all over their countries. There are more and more utility companies that do basically the same thing in the States, but it is not on the same scale as Europe.
What is the practical use of wind energy?
Is there anything that could be impractical about it? It isn’t finite, like fossil fuel and it will always be there. There are places where wind blows more, or harder, but no one can block it or command it to stop blowing.
There will always be something magical about the wind!
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