Wind Turbines may seem like they have very simple overall mechanism. But, there’s a lot going on in a simple wind turbine. To understand how wind turbines work, I will introduce you to this online Wind Turbine Simulator. Here, you will understand the working of wind turbines and how they produce electricity out of thin air.
This Wind Turbine Simulator is a part of a CK-12 Physics Simulations website. Here, you will be introduced to wind turbines through a short animated video, which tells you how efficient are wind turbines. Once the video is complete, you can go to the wind turbine simulation module. In this simulator, you can vary wind propeller diameter, set conversion efficiency, and set wind speed. After that, you can view the input power and output power generated for simulated parameters.
Let us get to know more about this simulator to learn how wind turbines work and how efficient they are.
You can also give this Photoelectric Effect Simulator Software and Solar System Simulator Software a try.
Short Video On How Efficient Wind Turbines Are
As you open this simulator, you will be welcomed with an introductory video.
In this video, you will know how wind turbines work and what is the efficiency of wind turbines.
The video does not takes you too deep into the science and technicalities of wind turbines. But, you will get a good idea about their working and efficiency.
Wind Turbine Simulation Module
Once the introductory video is over, you can move on to the Turbine Simulator module. This is how it looks like.
Here, you can see various controlling and graphical panels available. The control panels let you set the input parameters for wind turbine simulation. The graphical panels are there to show Input power and Output power generated. Let us see what all we can do with this tool.
The slider on the left can be used to set the propeller size. You can vary the size of propeller wings from 100 meters to 150 meters. You can observe the changes made by you on the wind turbine available on screen.
The other two sliders let you set the Conversion efficiency and wind speed. It lets you set Conversion efficiency from 5 % to 30 %. You can set Wind Speed from 0 m/s to 30 m/s.
The simulator runs the input fed by you in real time. The changes will take effect as you set the input through sliders.
The first graph shows the input power statistics. It plots shows wind speed vs wind power on a graph.
The another graph is the main graph that shows output power generated. It is displayed on a comparative chart. Here, the input wind power is displayed as white bar and compared to output electrical power in blue bar.
Closing Words
This wind turbine simulation tool is pretty informative and easy to use. Although it does not have many advanced options, but is enough to clear your concepts about wind turbines. A must try for students.
Access this Wind Turbine simulator from CK-12 here.
