Wind turbines have come a long way since the days of the early windmills. Today’s wind generators are high-tech propellers that range in size from small ones for a single home up to large towers producing enough electricity for a small town. Hickory Nut Forest is located in a natural gorge flanked by peaks with high wind currents. Our plans are to place a mid-sized wind turbine adjacent to the existing communication towers already there, and feed the energy into the existing electric grid.


Fossil-free Power
One of the most promising of renewable energy technologies is wind generated power. Wind energy systems vary in size from small backyard wind turbines up to industrial sized megawatt wind turbines. Once installed they generate electricity whenever the wind blows over a certain threshold. The best part is that no fossil fuels are required to generate this power. More and more companies are producing turbines of all sizes and utilities are becoming more willing to hook small wind turbines into the electrical grid.

Wind Turbines
How do wind turbines work? There is a lot of sophistication built into modern wind turbines, compared to the windmills of a century ago. Much of this engineering is to optimize the amount of power that can be generated at varying speeds of wind. The important elements in any design include: location of the tower, direction of the wind, size of the blades, average wind speed, and method of storage. We can touch on each of these briefly. As a rule, the higher the tower the better the wind flow. Placing the tower so it gets the prevailing wind directly without obstructions also increases performance. Larger blades increase the energy production significantly, so buy the biggest size you can afford. Low wind speeds are very inefficient, so look for a site that has higher average wind speeds. There are maps available to show you where these are. Finally you can store the electricity in batteries or feed directly into the grid and get paid by the utility. There is lots more detailed wind energy information available on the web on how does wind power work.