Wind Energy
Solar Power
Natural Energy Source
Renewable Energy
Wind power
The wind is one of the oldest energy sources that we have, people have been building wind mills for centuries and sailing ships are one of the oldest forms of transportation. These days however when we refer to wind power we are usually talking about wind turbines which turn the wind into electricity. This is one of the main sources of alternative energy and one that a lot of hopes have been pinned on. There are certainly a lot of advantages to using the wind as a source of energy but it also comes with some major challenges.
The obvious advantage of using wind power is that it produces no emissions, this is a major issue given the problems of global warming that we are facing. The other big advantage that wind power offers is that it is essentially free. The wind is always there, at least in some places, so taking advantage of it as a power source makes a lot of sense. The main problem is the capital costs in building the wind farms in the first place.
The wind may be free to use but the cost of building a wind farm is quite high. The result is that even though you can produce electricity with wind at a very low cost it still isn't low enough to offset the cost of building the wind farm. As a result most wind farms have required subsidizes in order to allow them to be built. In the future the cost of construction will likely come down but this is certainly not guaranteed. One thing that will help to make building wind turbines more affordable is if they can be amortized over a longer period. The cost of a wind farm is about the same as the cost of a hydroelectric plant. However since hydro plants are proven technology and investors know how long they will last for they can generally spread the construction costs out over a longer period.
The other big issue that wind farms will face is the amount of space that they take up. It requires a lot of wind turbines to produce enough electricity even to meet a small fraction of our needs. The reality is that we will never be able to build enough turbines to ever meet all of our electricity needs, it would take up almost the whole of the earth's surface. In addition if you have too many turbines, too close together they won't work properly making the whole wind farm inefficient.
Wind power is one of those alternative energy sources that has proven to be feasible but will likely never be a major power source. The reality is that it is just not efficient enough to ever be more than a supplement. That being said even being a supplement has value since it will reduce our need for fossil fuels.