Disadvantages of Wind Power
Everybody talks about the benefits of generating energy or electricity from wind using windmills, wind turbines, and wind farms, but are there potential disadvantages associated with using this clean form of power generation technology? The answer to that question is only becoming clearer today as more and more windmills, specifically wind farms are erected.
In the United Kingdom, there are a significant number of large cities that consume a lot of energy in the form of electricity. To address the electricity needs of the country, wind farms were erected in Wales, which is a part of the United Kingdom. In Wales there is plenty of land, very few people and most importantly a lot of wind. These factors contributed to the choice of Wales as one of the first places to erect wind farms, as it was more or less a deserted stretch of the country and it has a ready market. Over the last couple of decades a number of wind farms have been built in this area, and if they are close enough to villages there have been complaints of the noise of the machinery, a low drone coming over the landscape.
This noise is created by the turbines themselves, and although the wind power industry has come a long way to making the turbine quieter, there are still public concerns with noise pollution associated with wind turbines. Unfortunately, once the word was 'out' the population of most of the United Kingdom became rather concerned (if not angry) any time a wind farm was proposed in their area. Unfortunately, the commonly heard "not in my backyard" mentality has become mainstream with wind farms as well in many populated areas.
Other perceived disadvantages of wind farms are predominately due to the unpredictibility of weather, including the direction and speed of the wind and the unfortunate fact for a wind farmer - no wind at all on some days. Other disadvantages include the potential impact that heavy concentrations of windmills may have upon the wildlife of an area. Bird kills are common around wind farms, as with aircraft themselves wind mills use the same airspace as birds and should therefore be located away from bird habitats if possible.
Wind power is considered to be a perfect source of energy and electric generation, the power from the wind is free. Large areas of many countries get constant reliable winds and there is very little pollution. However, it has to be stressed that no form of electricity generation is perfect, and in the last decade as wind farms have grown in popularity there has been some resistance to them when they have been placed close to areas of human habitation.