Today large as well as small wind turbines are becoming popular because the electricity generated through them is non polluting and your power bills will come down considerably. Apart from the large wind turbines that you see in open spaces you can even install a small wind turbine on the roof of your house. The wind turbine is fixed to a pole that is installed in the roof. The two main parts of the wind turbine are the blades and the turbine housing, also called as nacelle.
The nacelle has a propeller shaft on the inside along with a generator assembly. Both these parts are connected to a pole with the help of a swivel assembly. This assembly has two parts which are the braking system and the yaw motor. The yaw motor gets its power from the generator and helps the device to face a proper direction. The controller begins to the rotation process of the blades when the wind speed is good and stops the rotation in case of strong winds.
The rotors drive the horizontal shaft which is connected to a small gearbox. The gearbox controls the revolutions per minute to a particular frequency that starts producing energy. There is a smaller shaft that connects the gearbox and the generator. The gearbox can deliver above 1,000 rpm to the generator.
The generator used of wind turbines can produce a 60 cycle alternating current. It is placed in the rear side of the nacelle and the wiring through which the electric current passes runs down the turbine pole to the underground battery storage area. The generator also balances the weight of the front side of the assembly where the rotors are present.
The controller unit receives information from the anemometer that is placed on the top of the rear section of the nacelle. Its main purpose is to start the generator in case the wind blow between 5-8 mph. there are some controller units that automatically unlock the nacelle from the pole of the tower so that it can swing in the breeze by the power from the yaw motor. The controller is connected to the emergency disc brake so that emergency shutdown can be automatically done in case of high intensity winds.
However engineers are constantly doing research in this field and new designs will come out soon to make the wind systems work optimally and be easy to maintain.