Leji Li

ENGL 21007
Professor Maria Vint
September 23, 2019

Wind Turbine

Wind turbine is a mechanism for converting kinetic energy from wind blowing to the electrical

energy. A wind turbine looks a windmill. The rotor was connected to the generator with shaft.

When the wind blows over the rotor, the shaft routes along with the rotor and the rotation makes

the generator generate electricity.

Figure 1 Inside of a wind turbine (Department of Energy)

Basic workflows:

1. Wind blows the blades in the rotor and let the rotor rotate.
 The blades in the rotor use the airfoil technology. When the wind flows through a blade,

this airfoil technology allows the wind produces a lift force on the blade. With the forces

Figure 2 Airfoil technology Figure 3 Lifting forces on blades (Learn Engineering)

on blades, the rotor can rotate as what can be seen on the windmill.

2. Low-speed shaft drives the high-speed shaft through gear box.

The rotor attaches with a shaft, and this shaft is rotating along with the rotor. However,

the rotation causes by the lifting forces has a low rpm (rotation per minute), which is too

low for the generator to generate electricity. This shaft that connected with rotor was

called low-speed shaft and gear box is needed to connect this low-speed shaft with a

high-speed shaft which is attached to the generator. Inside of the gear box, the low-speed

shaft connects to a gear with larger radius and the high-speed shaft connects to a gear

with smaller radius. The larger gear drives the smaller gear. When the larger gear rotates

one full rotation, because the distance that the larger gear moves should equal to the

distance that the smaller gear moves, the smaller gear rotates more than one rotation. So

that the high-speed shaft could have a higher rpm than the low-speed shaft.
 Figure 4 Gear Box (Learn Engineering)

3. Brake slow down the rotation of high-speed shaft to a certain speed.

The brake is in between of the gear box and the generator. The purpose of a brake is to

slow down the high-speed shaft when there’s an excessively wind condition, which will

cause the high-speed shaft has an overwhelming speed.

4. Generator generate electricity by rotation of the high-speed shaft.

The process converts from kinetic energy to electrical energy is called electromagnet.

The end of high-speed shaft that being part of the generator has a series of coils and being

placed into a magnetic shell. When the high-speed is rotating, the coils cuts the magnetic

field and generate the electrical current.

Figure 5 Generator (U.S. Energy Information Administration)

5. Electricity generated by the generator was passed to a step-up transformer to

transmit to the power station.

The electrical energy generated by the generator need to be transmit to the power station

to distribute to users or to be storage. The electricity current will be passed to the step-up

transformer, which will transform the electrical power has large current and low voltage

to the electrical power that has small current and high voltage. The small current and high

voltage will reduce the energy losing in the transmission.

 Work Cited
“Inside of the Wind Turbine.” Department of Energy, https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/inside-
wind-turbine. 23 September 2019.
Learn Engineering. “How do Wind Turbines Work?” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 29
July 2015. 23 September 2019.
“Electricity Explained How Electricity Is Generated.” U.S. Energy Information Administration,
U.S. Energy Information Administration, 15 Nov. 2018,
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/how-electricity-is-generated.php.