Alternative Energy HQ solar power for homes, wind energy, and bio fuel issues
Since Don Quixote de la Mancha’s times (and even before), wind energy has been used to help us on different daily life activities. Wind energy can be utilized in order to grind grain and even to pump water: that’s what windmills do. In that case, wind energy becomes mechanical energy to perform such activities.
But when a windmill turns into a wind turbine, it can provide electricity to power our homes. In that case, we speak of wind generators. Huge farm plants of wind turbines (also called wind power units or WPU) can provide much power with which many houses can be provided with the electricity supply they need. On the other hand, we can also build a simple wind turbine to provide our home with free, renewable and non-polluting electricity.
Whereas the purchase of all the elements we need to implement a wind energy unit or power converter to get free electricity in our home is not particularly cheap, an always more popular solution is to build oneself a DIY wind power generator.
The convenience or not for introducing a wind energy system for our house or apartment is quite obvious: wind turbines should be set in windy places. If this is not the case of our home or residence, it is better to go for another alternative energy system like a home solar system or a magnet-based generator (see the articles I wrote about these systems). However, if you can set up a wind turbine near your house in a place where wind blows quite consistently, that can be a very good alternative to, for instance, a photovoltaic energy system that requires quite expensive solar panels.
I always wonder why initiatives regarding the introduction of these clean, free and non-polluting energy resources are not more encouraged by everyone. Nowadays, we go on not only wiping out the oil resources of our planet but also contaminating our environment with the products derived from it. There are certainly some attempts in several countries and from different companies to implement some clean, non-polluting energy systems in some cases. Nevertheless, all this is almost nothing if we bear in mind how bad are we treating our planet and our fellow living creatures (animals and plants) by polluting and destroying their habitats and environment, and hence our own habitat and environment too.
For example, why do we not mass-produce electric cars only? Forty years after we landed on the moon it is hardy believable that we do not possess the needed technology to fabricate electric cars that are better than the best conventional cars today. Moreover, if a large amount of wind farms were set up, the energy all those cars needed could be easily obtained… for free! Of course the firsthand investment in order to build so many wind energy units would also be important, but at the long run this investment would pay off many times.
As it seems, we live in a somehow crazy world where common sense is the less common of senses, as it is said… However, we can always do something for ourselves, for our planet and hence for everyone who lives on it. So, every effort we make to introduce and/or encourage clean energy systems, like a wind power electricity system, will be a good, convenient and honorable deed.
