Introduction

For thousands of years, people have been harnessing wind energy to do work—from traveling around the world on sailing ships to grinding grain into flour using windmills. Today, wind is becoming more common as a renewable energy source through the use of wind turbines.

Wind turbines have four basic parts—a tower, turbine blades, a gear box, and a generator—that function together to convert kinetic energy from the wind into electrical energy. The amount of electrical energy that can be generated by a wind turbine is affected by many variables, which must all be taken into consideration by engineers who design the turbine.

In this experiment, you will use data-collection equipment to quantitatively investigate the effect of fan speed on the power output of a wind turbine.

Objectives