One field of great interest and promise for students is “energy harvesting”. Energy harvesting is the science, technology, and execution of collecting usable energy from a variety of sources typically outside of fossil fuels. Some examples would be wind energy, thermal energy, kinetic energy, solar energy, and tidal energy. There is a substantial push at the state and national levels regarding the exploration and research of such alternative energy sources. The political and corporate pipeline is becoming filled with policies, subsidies, and research grants to incentivize entities to help diversify Pakistan’s energy base.
The goal of this project is to examine one particular source of energy: wind energy. The science of wind energy is quite complex so our treatment here will be to give you a glimpse into this growing field.
The amount of energy “harvested” from the wind is dependent on several factors. Three main ones are:
The area swept out from the rotating blades.
The speed of the wind striking the blades.
The efficiency of the gear-box generator devices.