To understand how wind energy works, it’s helpful first to go back to review what many of us learned in junior high about how a basic electricity generator works.
Way back in 1831, the British genius Michael Faraday discovered that if you take a magnet and surround it with copper coils and then rotate the coils around the magnet, it will produce an electric current. It does that by causing electrons to be pulled through the copper wires.
This is still the fundamental principle used by generators today. Faraday turned his coils with a hand crank. That led naturally to creating an automated system to do the cranking. A generator coil can be turned with steam power — but later — gas and coal-powered systems were created to spin huge “turbines” that generated electricity.
Wind power works on the same principle, except instead of Michael Faraday’s hand or a coal-burning plant driving the process, it’s wind that is the source of power.
When wind moves past blades created with a certain curve to partially catch the wind, the result is a turning motion. Now all one has to do is rig a gearbox to those blades so that those gears can rotate a generator’s coils. The resulting electricity can then be harnessed to do all kinds of things, such as power lights, and produce heat for homes.
The first simple electricity-generating windmills came into use in the late 1880s. By 1900, there already were thousands of individual homeowners and businesses around the world running lights, water pumps, and various small motors with wind-driven copper coil generators.
Today, of course, engineering, materials, battery technology, and more complex/efficient generators all combine to make wind energy a serious contender for one of the best ways to produce power. The problem with wind energy, in the beginning, was that it could generate only tiny amounts of useful electricity — but windmill design has advanced.
For example, there are now horizontal-axis windmill blades and vertical-axis models. Other windmills are “marine turbines.” Instead of the wind pushing the blades, it’s the motion of water that gets the job done.
Furthermore, the contribution of materials development cannot be overstated in importance.
Modern windmill blades are made from a combination of steel, fiberglass, resin, plastic, carbon fiber, copper and aluminum. This makes them enormously strong while also highly flexible so they can bend with the wind and use the pressure it applies to the greatest advantage, angle and speed.