Recent developments:

The primary obstacle to the development of wind turbines is that they are more expensive to install than conventional generating plant. Therefore, recent research has concentrated on ways of making wind turbines more cost effective. It is not good enough for them simply to work - they must be able to produce electricity at prices competitive with fossil fuels, hydro and nuclear generating plant.

Clearly there are many environmental benefits from supplying electricity through a combination of wind turbines and main electricity generating plant. But this method can be highly inefficient. Another challenge for renewable energy scientists is that wind power is not always available when it is needed. Over a short period, wind is unreliable and difficult to predict, but there are still ways of using the energy to our advantage. An average wind speed of only 11 kilometres per hour is needed to convert wind energy into electricity, although renewable energy developers seek locations that have an average wind speed of over 27 kilometres per hour.

Above - Windfarms are becoming a more common sight worldwide.

A popular solution is the wind farm, which consists of several wind turbines in a central location. Wind farms usually feed their electricity into a main electricity grid system. The wind turbines need to be kept at a clear distance from each other, otherwise air turbulence results in energy losses and greater fatigue on the downstream wind turbines. But as more wind turbines appear along the world’s coastlines, there is a growing concern about their visual appearance. However, wind energy has been flourishing partly because turbines are becoming larger and more efficient and therefore they are capable of delivering more clean, green energy to local Australian communities.

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