Wind turbine anatomy, the power curve and the Betz limit, wind resource assessment basics, distributed/small wind vs. utility-scale wind, and the siting considerations that determine whether a wind project actually pencils out.
A wind turbine converts the kinetic energy in moving air into electricity through a rotor, a nacelle housing the drivetrain and generator, and a tower — but how much energy it actually produces depends on far more than nameplate capacity. This module builds the physical and practical foundation the rest of this program's wind-related content assumes: why power in the wind scales with the cube of wind speed, why the Betz limit caps any turbine's theoretical efficiency at 59.3%, how a manufacturer's power curve translates wind speed into output, and how wind resource assessment, siting, and the distributed-vs-utility-scale distinction shape a real wind project.
By the end of this module you should be able to explain why two sites with the same average wind speed can have very different annual energy production — a distinction this module frames through the Weibull wind-speed distribution, and one Module 12's energy modeling content and Module 13's financial analysis content each build on from their own side of the problem.