In the 1970s, humanity encountered an oil crisis, and non renewable resources gradually failed to meet human needs. Clean energy has returned to people's vision, among which wind power generation is highly welcomed and China attaches great importance to its development.

In recent years, scientists and some environmentalists have continuously proposed that wind power generation can bring certain hazards. Is this hearsay or is there factual basis? Should China continue to develop wind power generation or follow the advice of foreign experts?

The current main power generation methods in China

In China, there are mainly wind power generation, hydropower generation, thermal power generation, solar power generation, and nuclear power generation. Currently, the main source of electricity still relies on thermal power generation. However, during the process of thermal power generation, a large amount of carbon dioxide is released, causing certain damage to the environment. In order to better protect the environment, China has launched many new power generation methods, among which wind power generation is very prominent. China's wind power generation facilities are mainly built in some coastal areas and the northwest.

Wind is a highly promising new energy source that has been highly regarded by many countries. According to experts, the wind energy reserves on Earth are approximately 253 million kilowatts, which is 10 times more than the total amount of water energy that can be developed and utilized on Earth. As a promising new energy source, why is China vigorously constructing it while some countries are vigorously demolishing it?

In recent years, European and American countries have proposed that wind power generation poses certain risks to humanity. In the face of these problems, should China demolish or continue to vigorously build it?

The main principles and structures of wind power generation

Generally speaking, wind power generation converts the kinetic energy generated by the wind into mechanical kinetic energy, which is then converted into electricity. The wind drives the blades of the windmill to rotate, and the internal growth rate of the windmill increases the speed, thereby promoting the generator to generate electricity. According to wind power generation technology, only a gentle breeze of 3 meters per second is needed to drive wind power generation. After generating electricity, it needs to be boosted and connected to the national grid through transformers, and finally transmitted to households.

Wind power generation has become a trend in many countries around the world, mainly because it does not generate fuel problems or pollute the air. Due to the different regions and seasons, there are significant differences in the direction and strength of the wind generated. To maximize the use of wind power generation, it is necessary to keep it constantly rotating. Therefore, when selecting the site for wind turbines, it is necessary to choose to import and export in some basins, lakes, and oceans with high wind power, and try to avoid some villages, national resource mining areas, and protected areas.

Why do the fan blades rotate very slowly when the wind speed is high? Actually, this is easy to understand. The slow speed of fan blades is closely related to their own weight and wind speed. The larger the fan body, the longer the blades, the heavier the weight, and the slower the speed. Although sometimes the wind speed is very fast, when the wind speed exceeds the specified speed of the fan, the fan will stop working. If the operation is not stopped, a very fast speed will cause a significant increase in centrifugal force, resulting in inertial action that will make the fan unstable and cause blade breakage.

In fact, wind power generation does not depend on the speed of wind turbine rotation. When the blades are at a constant speed, the force on the blades will increase, and the power will also increase. In this case, the larger the wind turbine blades, the more power generation they will produce. Simply put, three blades can bring the fan to a balanced state. If there are too many blades, achieving a balanced state can be very difficult and costly.

In recent years, tens of millions of birds have died every year from wind turbine impellers. Some environmentalists believe that wind power has accelerated the death of some birds, so they are very resistant to wind power. The reason why fans cause birds to die is because they produce a certain amount of noise during their rotation. Some people in Australia have stated that they often cannot sleep at night since the installation of wind power nearby, believing that the sound emitted by the wind turbines affects sleep quality. However, there is currently no conclusive evidence to support this claim.

The wind turbine can also disturb some low altitude birds, and the pine bird in Kansas, USA, has gradually disappeared under wind power generation. Another thing is that the light emitted by wind farms can attract some insects to gather, especially some birds that fly at night. Unfortunately, birds will die under the impeller.

According to relevant surveys, the surroundings of wind farms are indeed not suitable for some birds to live and inhabit, which may have a certain impact on the ecosystem, but all of this depends on data. It is understood that on average, 100000 to 440000 birds die each year under impellers in the United States, but over 500 million birds die from high-rise building impacts. There is only a one in ten thousand chance that birds that die in human activities will die from wind turbine impellers, so the impact of wind power generation on birds is not very serious.

European and American countries have stated that wind power generation will have a certain impact on the climate. According to researchers from Harvard University, wind farms have affected the climate. As wind turbines continue to rotate, they replace the upper layer of high-temperature air with the lower layer of low-temperature air, causing a 0.5 degree Celsius increase in local temperatures and increasing the greenhouse effect.

They have another theory that wind power utilizes the wind energy in the atmosphere, and according to the law of energy conservation, one type of energy generated will consume another type of energy. Wind energy is an important factor in climate change, and if there is a change, it will have a serious impact on the climate.

But when it comes to harm, it's just playing tricks. Currently, there are many large wind power plants distributed around the world, but we humans have very little interest in wind energy development. There is a common problem in many renewable energy sources, which is low utilization efficiency. Nature has created renewable energy, as well as the indirectness and instability of renewable energy.

From the perspective of power grid control, wind power generation is referred to as "garbage power". The reason for this is that wind power generation is more difficult to control and apply compared to other methods. Wind power generation has drawbacks such as randomness, inverse peak shaving, and high construction costs.

Randomness, as the name suggests, means that the wind is not controlled by humans, and the wind power fluctuates greatly, which sometimes leads to wind power generation not being effective and the power output not being fixed.

Simply put, reverse peak shaving refers to the situation where wind turbines generate very little electricity when the power grid requires a large amount of electricity. Sometimes the power grid reaches a state of power saturation, and wind turbines provide a large amount of electricity. If a large amount of electricity enters the power grid in a saturated state during a certain period of time, it will increase the pressure on the power grid, and in severe cases, it may cause the power grid to collapse in a short period of time.

Small wind turbines are usually equipped with battery packs, which can increase construction costs to a certain extent. Later maintenance and upkeep should also consider the issue of battery packs, which will greatly increase one's own costs.

Due to the various reasons mentioned above, some European and American countries that do not rely on wind power as the main power generation method have boycotted and manually dismantled the wind power generation equipment that was originally built. But in countries with a relatively large proportion of wind power generation, such as the UK, where wind power accounts for over 10% of the local population, although they are also demolishing wind power, it is not on a large scale, and large-scale demolition may have a certain impact on society.

Germany has always been at the forefront of wind power generation in the world. According to relevant data, the total power generation in Germany in 2019 was 515.6 billion kilowatt hours, of which wind power accounted for 24.67% of the total power generation, which is relatively large compared to other countries. As a country passionate about renewable and clean energy, Germany had planned to achieve over 65% clean energy power supply nationwide by 2030. Many scholars and the public have expressed opposition to this, which has led to a sharp decline in Germany's renewable clean energy generation. The high proportion of wind power consumption in Germany is mainly due to their decentralized grid connection, while we currently focus on centralized grid connection.

The proportion of wind power generation in China is not large, only 5.6%, while thermal power generation is still the mainstream, accounting for 70.5%. At present, wind power generation faces two problems. The first is that the grid connection technology of wind turbines needs to be improved; The second issue is the consumption of electricity after large-scale grid connection, although it has faced various technical obstacles. However, in the current national situation, wind power generation is essential.

The reason why our country is promoting wind power generation is because the northwest region of our country has complex terrain, high altitude, abundant wind resources, and insufficient power resources. If thermal power generation is developed in the northwest region, the initial investment is relatively large, and the later maintenance cost is also high. Therefore, it is feasible to use renewable clean energy for power generation in the northwest region to some extent.

At present, there are also some wind turbine demolition plans in our country, but most of them are mainly aimed at protecting the natural environment and demolishing old equipment. However, in reality, the total number of wind turbines in China is constantly increasing. Although wind power has certain shortcomings, we cannot deny the value it generates just because of its shortcomings. I believe that in the future, there will be safer and more reliable technological implementations for renewable clean energy, and at that time, traditional power generation methods will face a major overhaul.