why does wind power increase exponentially, not linearly, with increase of wind speed?
In: Physics
It’s not exponential, it’s cubic. And you can think of it like this: if you double the wind speed, you get twice as much wind passing a given point. That’s 2x. But remember that kinetic energy is proportional to the square of the speed. So that’s 4x the kinetic energy.
Combine it and you get: a 2x increase in wind speed gives you an *8x* increase in energy, or a cubic relationship.
That hand wavy explanation won’t pass muster in physics class, but it’s good enough for here, I think.
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