Hi! Today I’m going to tell you a little bit about my Innovation day project in grade 5.  For my project I made a wind turbine that powers a light in a park!

This is my information on my poster board about how a wind turbine makes electricity!

How do wind turbines make electricity? Well It starts by the wind slowly turning the turbine blades. In the main housing, called the nacelle, there are a lot of components for stability and direction. But the key components of a common configuration of wind turbine are the Drive Shaft, Gearbox and Generator. The force of the wind that turns the blades turns the drive shaft. The drive shaft has a large gear in the gear box that turns a smaller one, because the second gear is smaller it turns faster, fast enough to make electricity. That second gear turns a rotor, this rotates inside a drum of wire coils called a stator. The rotor excites the electrons in the stator, creating an electrical current. This process works exactly like the alternator in your car. The current travels down a cable inside the tower and into a transformer at the bottom where it is converted to a higher voltage for long distance travel.

 

And this is my wind power information on my poster!

Anything that moves around has a type of energy called kinetic energy. Wind is air moving around therefore wind is a type of kinetic energy.

 

Wind power is harnessed by a machine which is called a wind turbine. Wind turbines are tall towers, topped with blades. These blades are connected to a vertical shaft, or rod. When the force of the wind causes the blades to spin, they turn the shaft.Turning the shaft provides power to a machine called a generator, which will produce electricity.

 

 One of the bad things about wind turbines is that birds and bats can be injured or killed if they are hit by turbine blades. These deaths may contribute to declines in the population of species also affected by other human-related impacts. Otherwise wind is a great clean energy source that doesn’t hurt the environment. 

 

 

This is a image of my innovation day project!