Wind Energy: Future of renewable energy

Humanity has registered great technological and scientific advances in last one century and the vital energy for that growth has come from fossil fuel reserves. Figure 1 shows the time vs production graph for various energy resources from which it can be noticed how beginning from first and second war respectively production of coal, Oil and gas has increased nearly exponentially. [1] But the fact that these resources of energy are not going to last forever has put a big question mark on sustaininability and future of developement of mankind, besides some of the problems such as global warming created by ruthless and unsustainable approach for growth has raised great challenges for survival of life itself. Historically the fruits of growth have been enjoyed by a very small fraction of population and large section of Figure-1 humanity could not become a part of it. We are now on an important juncture where growth has started percolating to those

Figure 2

chronically deprived of their share and if some scientists are right it is also the time corresponding to peak production of oil and so while energy demand is expected to increase more rapidly in future our supply from fossil reserves is going to reduce after some year onwards. Figure 2 gives a very long term projection of energy consumpition pattern of fossil fuel reserves and also plotted the total energy requirement of the world in future for comparison and it can be easily seen that while total energy provided by fossil fuel reserves (Coal, Oil ,Gas) is going to decrease after a peak in near future demand is going to increase very rapidly and our present approach is totally unsustainable. Not only that biggest pressure to reduce dependence on fossil fuel is coming from from somewhere else. CO2 content in atmosphere has increased from its preindustrialization period value of 280ppm to 380 ppm and this along with some other green house gasses has resulted into nearly 0.750C increase in average global temperature and if corrective measures will not be taken in near future it will result into desasterous consequences . So what is the way forward? In last few decades there has been growing research on alternative sources of energy and number of promising areas such as Nuclear, Solar, Wind, Geothermal, Osmotic have come forward. Efforts to device plans which could effectively integrate all these sources according to their regional, economic and technological feasibility are being put through out the world and some of them have worked quite well in different regions of the world. For instance european countries like France, Belgium ect have very effectively utilized Nuclear energy, geothermal and Osmotic are in their initial phase while a large capacity is being installed in Solar and Wind energy.

Why Wind Energy With present technology none of the resources of alternate energy is effective enough that it could be relied in isolation instead a very balanced combination of all availible resources is required. In last few years results obtained with wind energy are so strong that in combination with other factors discussed following in the report it has emerged as arguably most promissing resource in near future. Following are the some advantages of wind energy over other sources :

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Short gestation period. Environment friendly. Least equity participation required. The cheapest source of electrical energy(on a levelled cost over 20 years.) [2] Comparitive Operation and Maintenance (O&M) costs are low. Least investment in manpower compared to other resources. No fear for desaster which is a major drawback with Nuclear energy. Huge potential for both onshore and offshore plants.

Figure-3 shows the cumulative wind power capacity around the world between 19962010 and it suggests that total wind energy production in 2010 was 194.4GW which is more than present total electricity generation of India. Also in just last 5 years it has increased from 59 GW to 194.4 with an annual growth rate of 26.7%. Recently released Global wind energy councils Figure-3 statistics suggest that 41000 MW of capacity has been added in 2011[3]. China added nearly 18000 MW in 2011 which lead to its total wind energy production of more than 62000 MW which is around 1/3rd of total power production of India. India itself has installed capacity more than 16000 MW from wind energy[3] . Which is much higher than than nuclear (4700MW) or Solar ( 178 MW) [4] also capacity is expected to increase by 5000MW/yr from 2015 onwards [3]. GWEC report on Indian Wind energy Outlook 2011 suggest there is total onshore wind energy generation potential of 100000 MW in Figure-4 India[5] mainly located in southern states with Maharastra and Gujrat. Globally Figure-4 shows the projections for the future. So in 2020 its production should be between 500GW to 1000GW which will be well ahed of other competitors such as solar. Figure-5 Shows a comparison between development prospects of various renewable resources in terms of their value and as it suggests wind will be leading followed by solar and others.[6]

Also economic analysis suggests(Figure-6) that wind energy is significantly cheaper than solar and quite competitive to Nuclear[7]. Although Hydro energy is more economical than wind[8] but its huge environmental impact seen all over the world and limited

Figure-5

Figure-6

potential and high technological requirements makes wind more preferable. Similar problems also persist with nuclear energy and after fukushima incident there is a growing opposition against further installation.

Thermodynamic analysis of wind turbine

A wind turbine converts kinetic energy of air into electrical energy and obviously according to first law of thermodynamics energy remains conserved during the process. For our analysis purpose we can assume a stream tube which is a kind of imaginary cylinder of wind passing through the blades of turbine. As shown in the schematic diagram [9] Air with velocity U moves towards the rotar and slows down due to increased

Figure-7: Stream tube around a rotor, showing the velocities at various points. The initial velocity U is the free stream velocity, U1 is the decreased velocity at the rotor, and U2 is the slower velocity after the rotor.

pressure which in turn leads to its expansion according to continuity equation. As it passes through rotor it loses its kinetic energy and imparts it to the rotor blades which run a dynamo to generate electricity. Because total momentum is conserved so Rate of change of momentum= mass flow rate Change in velocity

Where

U=

U2

Power transferred to wind turbine

Using known fluid flow techniques and the Bernoulli function, one can show that the flow velocity at the rotor is the average of the velocities before and after [9] so-

A variable known as the axial induction factor, a, is often introduced where-

So from above two equations

We get maxima for P at a=1/3 which corresponds to maximum usable power of wind and known as Betz limit. Figure 8 gives a graph of total power input, usable power in the wind and turbine output for range of wind speeds as obtained by Danish Wind Industry Association, 2003
Figure-8

References
1. 2. 3.

http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/oil/oil_use.html Center for wind energy technology(C-WET). http://cleantechnica.com/2012/02/08/installed-wind-power-capacityworld/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_India#Installed_capacity GWEC report on Indian Wind energy Outlook 201 1 http://www.solarselections.co.uk/blog/discussing-the-future-of-the-uksolar-industry-part-three-a-perspective-on-international-investmenttrends Byrne et al., 2008 Comparing Energy Costs of Nuclear, Coal, Gas, Wind and Solar, Jason Morgan | Published April 2, 2010 Harvesting the Wind: The Physics of Wind Turbines, Kira Grogg.

4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

9.