How does wind spin those giant turbines? It seems like even high-speed winds wouldn’t move it very quickly with how heavy the turbine blades must be.
In: Planetary Science
Whilst there are many good answers here, they don’t fully give the reason why the blades move.
The blades aren’t “pushed round by the wind” like you would logically thing, instead, the blades are shaped like the wing of an aeroplane (or airplane). As the wind passes over the blade, an area of low pressure is formed on one side of the blade, and high pressure on the other side. This causes the blade to be “pulled” (by the low pressure) and “pushed” (by the high pressure).
As the blades are all connected on a very low friction hub and are very long, this relatively weak force is converted in to rotational force for drive the generator, which is connected to the hub through a gear box.
In addition, the blades are built to be incredibly light for their size, with modern construction techniques, and our made from glass fibre and are hollow.
Source: I have worked in the renewable energy market for more than the last ten years.
And:
https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/how-wind-turbine-works-text-version
“When wind flows across the blade, the air pressure on one side of the blade decreases. The difference in air pressure across the two sides of the blade creates both lift and drag. The force of the lift is stronger than the drag and this causes the rotor to spin.”
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