Module 4: Small wind energy

Abstract

CC BY-NC-SA This licence allows others remix, transform, or build upon the material without commercial purposes, giving appropriate credit and distributing their contributions under the same license as the original. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10. 6035/IN2RURAL.2016.12 The PDF version of this document is available in: http://in2rural.ub.ro/, http://in2rural.uji.es/ and http://repositori.uji.es/xmlui/handle/10234/154485 Subchapter 5.9 -Case Study 9 …………………………………………………………. 144 The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.Subchapter 5.10 -Case Study 10 ……………………………………………………… 147"The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein." Summary: To start this module it is necessary an introductive part about the use of wind energy to produce electricity. There are presented historical data of wind energy use, the evolution in time of wind turbines, basic constructive configurations of turbines with the principal elements components. There are presented the conditions for efficient exploitation and it is pointed out the importance of the development of electricity production using wind energy. "The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein." 2Renewable energy for local development course 1. Principles concerning the use of wind energy Historical data of wind energy useAs already introduced in Module 1 of the course, wind can be defined as the movement of air masses from the Earth's atmosphere, generated by differences of pressure between two areas of the globe (baric gradient). These differences are determined by the uneven heating due to solar radiation and to Earth's rotation. When the air is heated, the warmer air rises faster because a volume of hot air is lighter than an equal volume of cold air. Hot air particles have a higher pressure than colder particles, therefore, it takes fewer particles to maintain the same air pressure. When warm air rises, cold air flows into the spaces that hot air leaves behind it, and the air that rushes to fill the gap is called wind. The wind presses on any object that lies in its path, and in the process, energy transfers occur to the object which was in the path of wind. This is how wind turbines produce energy.Wind is a clean energy source, free and inexhaustible. That is why, as explained in the introductory module of the course, wind power has been used by humans for thousands of years. For examp...