The Pros And Cons Of Wind Energy In Kansas

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How often do you think of where you get your electricity? How our cars are able to work, and how our houses are heated in the wintertime to keep us warm? There are many different types of renewable energy, but how often do we use them? Wind energy is probably Kansans best bet of creating the energy we need to prosper. By looking at the pros of renewable energy sources, the pros of wind energy in Kansas, and the efficiency of vertical axis wind turbines to the horizontal axis, we’ll discover this together. Why don’t we use more renewable energy sources? What role do they currently play? According to Energy Kids, in 2008 renewable resources only produced seven percent of the energy that we used. One reason we don’t use a lot of renewable energy …show more content…

As most people know, Kansas is a windy state. Every day the wind is blowing. So how can wind energy, be more beneficial than solar power? Taking a look at the difference between solar and wind energy in Kansas will help us see that Kansans can benefit more from wind energy than solar.
Kansas is not the hottest or the sunniest state in the United States. So how would we here in Kansas really benefit from solar energy? “Because the sun doesn’t deliver that much energy to any one place at any one time, a large surface area is required to collect the energy at a useful rate” (Energy Sources). According to American Wind Energy Association, nine of the eleven American solar power plants are in California. So the leading places in the U.S. are on the western end of America. Also, solar power isn’t a reliable source for Kansans because the sun doesn’t shine every day.
Wind energy, on the other hand, is where Kansas excels. According to American Wind Energy Association the central states through Kansas and down to Texas are the leading states in wind energy (Wind Energy and Wildlife). We are the windiest states of America, so we would gain more from wind energy than solar …show more content…

Every so often workers have to go up the tower and unwind the wire that is located in the generator at the top of the tower (Campbell). The reason they have to unwind the wire is so the wind turbine can turn into the wind to create energy. These wind turbines only rotate one way, they don’t rotate both ways, so after a while the wire turning the wind turbine tightens and the wind turbine is unable to turn anymore. So the workers have to go up to the generator of the wind turbine and unwind the wire manually (Campbell). Also, with all the wiring and gears up in the generator, workers have to go up the ladder which is found on the inside of a turbine, and check to make sure everything is alright (Gipe).
You’ll almost always find these wind turbines in open fields and they are usually called wind farms. Because these wind turbines create so much turbulence they have to be so far apart from each other and they can’t be right behind each other (Gipe). These wind turbines have to be 200-300 feet in the air because the blades on these wind turbines are 65-130 feet long (Gipe). Also these wind turbines have to have a 17 miles per hour wind to start spinning, because a wind smaller than that won’t create enough energy

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