2. The main shaft: it is a piece of metal in the form of a tube which constitutes the most important spinning constituent since it conveys the energy from the wind turbine blades to the other parts of the wind turbine.

A wind turbine consists of five major and many auxiliary parts. The major parts are the tower, rotor, nacelle, generator, and foundation or base.

The high-speed shaft drives the generator which produces AC electrical current. Power cables transport the electricity to ground level. An anemometer measures the wind speed and transmits wind speed data to the controller. The controller starts the wind turbine at speeds of about 12 to 25 km/h.

Four parts, however, are vital: The generator, nacelle, tower and blades.

Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator(PMSG), Field excited synchronous generator (FESG) and the Induction Generator(IG) are three candidate for such application. As permanent magnet excitation eliminates the excitation losses of a FESG hence PMSG will be more favored option.

The generator in a wind turbine produces alternating current (AC) electricity. Some turbines drive an AC/AC converter—which converts the AC to direct current (DC) with a rectifier and then back to AC with an inverter—in order to match the frequency and phase of the grid.

If it is a small power experiment, a stepper motor generates good power at lower rpm (revolutions per minute). Stepper motors can be obtained from old broken printers and scanners. This is one instructable that makes a light glow with stepper motor generator.

Simply take any old AC motor, add magnets to the rotor, put it in the wind and you have power. A fan motor, no matter if its a box fan, table fan or a huge gigantic barn fan, will work perfectly well for this. Take any AC motor with fan blades on it.

You can use just about any motor to generate electric current, if it is wired correctly and you follow specific rules for its use. Modern AC induction motors are quite simple to wire as alternating current generators, and most will begin generating electricity the first time you use them.

The fan is a bi-directional machine, so it can transform wind energy in mechanical energy without any change. In order to obtain electrical energy, it shall be necessary to make changes in the motor to obtain a generator. The design of these motors is very simple.

600V

The smallest production wind turbines have a rotor diameter of 1 m and only produce enough power to charge a few 12 volt batteries : about 100 watts.

Electricity generation sources

• Hydro. Hydropower uses the power of flowing water to create electricity.
• Nuclear. Nuclear power comes from a nuclear fission process that generates heat, which is used to generate the steam that rotates the turbines to generate electricity.
• Coal.
• Natural Gas.
• Biomass.
• Wind.
• Oil.
• Solar.

Most electricity is generated with steam turbines using fossil fuels, nuclear, biomass, geothermal, and solar thermal energy. Other major electricity generation technologies include gas turbines, hydro turbines, wind turbines, and solar photovoltaics.

Advantages of Wind Power. Wind power is cost-effective. Land-based utility-scale wind is one of the lowest-priced energy sources available today, costing 1–2 cents per kilowatt-hour after the production tax credit.