Wind energy pros and cons

As the world increasingly looks for renewable alternatives to traditional sources of power such as fossil fuels, wind energy is often cited as a clean and effective candidate. Produced through the use of carefully situated wind turbines, wind would appear to have lots of potential for creating clean, cheap, and renewable energy, certainly if you listen to its proponents. Opponents of wind power, however, highlight the unsightliness of the wind farms as a major drawback, plus the unreliability of wind turbines when compared to traditional power plants in terms of supplying the power levels needed by the modern world.

There are over eighty countries in the world at the moment who are using wind power commercially, these include Denmark, Spain, Portugal, USA, China, and Germany. (In Denmark about a fifth of all their energy needs are supplied by wind power, which is the largest proportion of any country).

In my wind energy pros and cons, I list the advantages and disadvantages of trying to harness the wind as a source of power.

Wind energy is plentiful and there is enough of it around to supply all the world’s energy needs, if harnessed properly. Plus, unlike oil, gas and uranium, wind energy will not run out.

Wind energy is essentially free with only the initial cost of setting up the turbines and minimal maintenance fees to pay for.

Wind energy has negligible environmental impact when it comes to things like pollution, contamination, toxic waste etc. especially when compared with what other energy sources create, such as the radioactive waste from nuclear power.

Wind energy also produces no greenhouse gasses, like with fossil fuels, and so does not contribute towards global warming.

Wind energy is very cost effective when you compare it with other power sources, such as nuclear energy.

Wind farms can be situated in remote areas, or offshore where they won’t cause a blot on the eye for people. Their ugliness, disruptiveness, and the noise of the turbines tends to be exaggerated by the anti-wind energy people, anyway.

An individual wind turbine produces very little energy. To produce sufficient amounts of power, many turbines need to be gathered together in large “wind farms”. Wind farms therefore take up huge amounts of space, even just to produce relatively small amounts of power, covering far bigger areas than conventional power stations.

Wind farms look unsightly, often spoiling areas of natural beauty. They can also be noisy and disruptive in other ways.

Wind turbines kill many birds, who fly into them by accident.

Although the idea of “free” electricity might seem appealing, there are problems associated with wind power that you don't get with traditional energy sources. One main difficulty is that wind energy is unreliable and you can’t predict how much energy that you will have coming in from day to day, because even when the wind does blow, it is inconsistent in its strength. Modern society needs energy levels maintained at certain levels in order to keep functioning. Because of the unreliabilty of wind, it isn't as flexible as traditional sources of power - for instance, if your power levels are running low, you can’t respond quickly and create lots more energy suddenly like you can with most traditional power sources (For instance, with coal you can increase power output just by burning more.)

The cost effectiveness of wind energy is also sometimes overestimated. This is because the technology involved has to be very high tech to try to counteract some of the problems associated with the unreliability of wind and efficiency mentioned above. This state-of-the-art technology that is needed can be very expensive (a modern wind turbine isn't just a propellor, it consists of lots of complex electronics and gear systems). Even with all the technology, research has shown that a typical wind turbine only works at about a third of its potential power-producing capacity on average.