Study shows potential of super grids when hurricanes overshadow solar panels
When hurricanes threaten tropical shores, "super grids" could come to the rescue.
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When hurricanes threaten tropical shores, "super grids" could come to the rescue.
9 hours ago
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While wind energy is becoming one of the fastest-growing energy sources in the world, wind turbine blade waste emerges as a critical issue. Addressing this urgent environmental concern, Lithuanian researchers have developed ...
Apr 23, 2024
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The Danish Energy Agency on Monday launched its biggest tender for the construction of offshore wind farms, aimed at producing six gigawatts by 2030—more than double Denmark's current capacity.
Apr 22, 2024
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U.S. land-based and offshore wind energy markets are expected to grow significantly over the next few decades. With this growth, the demand for properly trained wind energy workers will also increase to meet national deployment ...
Apr 19, 2024
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Deepwater divers who monitor and maintain underwater transmission lines and cables for offshore wind turbines face hazards such as subfreezing temperatures, low visibility, jellyfish and sharks.
Apr 18, 2024
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Wind power is a source of energy that is both affordable and renewable. However, decision-makers have been reluctant to invest in wind energy due to a perception that wind farms require a lot of land compared to electric ...
Apr 17, 2024
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The U.S. power grid is the largest and most complex machine ever built. It's also aging and under increasing stress from climate-driven disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes and heat waves.
Apr 15, 2024
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Imagine a vast volume of porous sandstone reservoir, once full of oil and natural gas, now full of a different carbon-free fuel—hydrogen. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories are using computer simulations and laboratory ...
Apr 9, 2024
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Connecting cheap, clean energy from renewables comes with a hidden cost and challenge: building 5,000 kilometers of new transmission lines this decade, and another 5,000km after that. This sounds like a lot, but 5,000km is ...
Apr 5, 2024
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If you imagine an industrial wind turbine, you likely picture the windmill design, technically known as a horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT). But the very first wind turbines, which were developed in the Middle East around ...
Apr 3, 2024
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Wind is the flow of air or other gases that compose an atmosphere (including that of the planet Earth). On Earth and within other planetary atmospheres, wind consists of air molecules in motion. In outer space, solar wind is the movement of gases or charged particles from the sun through space, while planetary wind is the outgassing of light chemical elements from a planet's atmosphere into space. Differences in density between two air masses lead to wind. Winds are commonly classified by their spatial scale, their speed, the types of forces that cause them, the geographic regions in which they occur, and their effect. While wind is often a standalone weather phenomenon, it can also occur as part of a storm system, most notably in a cyclone. While winds on Earth can be strong, the strongest winds within a planet in our solar system lie on Neptune and Saturn.
Winds are plotted on surface weather analyses indicating the direction the wind is blowing from as well as its strength, and over much of the globe wind speeds are measured over a ten-minute time frame, with the United States and India using different averaging intervals. Shorter duration winds, such as wind gusts, exceed the minimum value over the observed time frame and can cause substantial damage to power lines and suspension bridges. Winds with an intermediate duration, which sharply increase and last for a minute are termed squalls. Long-duration wind speeds have various names associated with their average strength, such as breeze, gale, storm, hurricane, and typhoon. Wind occurs on a range of scales, from local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting tens of minutes, to global winds resulting from the difference in absorption of solar energy between the climate zones on Earth. The two major driving factors of large scale atmospheric circulation are the differential heating between the equator and the poles, which causes the jet stream and the associated climatological mid-latitude westerlies, polar easterlies, and the trade winds, and the rotation of the planet (Coriolis effect), which causes the circular motion of air around areas of high and low pressure. Within the tropics, thermal low circulations over terrain and high plateaus can drive monsoon circulations. In areas where winds tend to be light, the sea breeze/land breeze cycle is the most important to the prevailing wind; in areas that have variable terrain, mountain and valley breezes dominate the wind pattern.
In human civilization, wind has inspired mythology, influenced the events of history, expanded the range of transport and warfare, and provided a power source for mechanical work, electricity, and recreation. Wind has been used to steer sailing ships across vast oceans. By air, hot air balloons use the wind to take short trips. Airships have historically been used for longer trips, but nowadays are used for a variety of monitoring efforts such as during public sporting events and drug trafficking efforts. Wind can be dangerous, as areas of wind shear caused by various weather phenomena can lead to dangerous situations for airplanes. When winds become strong, trees and man-made structures are damaged or destroyed.
Winds can shape landforms, via a variety of aeolian processes such as the formation of fertile soils, such as loess, and by erosion. Dust from large deserts can be moved large distances from their source region by the prevailing winds. Winds that are accelerated by rough topography and associated with dust outbreaks have been assigned regional names in various parts of the world due to their significant effects on those regions. Wind helps to spread wildfires. Nature uses wind to help disperse seeds from various plants, in order to enable the survival of those plant species, as well as flying insect populations. When combined with cold temperatures, wind has a negative impact on livestock. Wind impacts animal food stores, as well as their hunting and defensive strategies.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA