Overview
     

Uneven heating of the Earth's surface cause the wind to blow.  Modern wind turbines using advanced technologies are able to produce electricity for homes, business, and even utilities. Wind power, already one of the most appealing sources of energy today, will continue to prosper as new turbine designs currently under development reduce the costs of wind power and make wind turbines economically viable in more and more places.

In the short term, wind energy will be one of renewable energy with a promising market penetration for large-scale development and utilization. For the 20 year, the wind generation leaped from pilot study to mature technology, with its generation cost declining from 20 US cents/kWh to 5 US cents/kWh, almost equaling to that of conventional energy generation, making wind energy eminent among the renewable generation powered by solar, biomass and ocean energy. A new industry was therefore formed up, which has increased mostly among the electricity industry. Comparing with other type of generation, wind power is of most cleanness without any emissions of toxic matter or any problems relating to immigration of population. Therefore, to develop the wind power is one of important measures to lessen gases emissions from the warm house, to protect the ecological environment, and improve the electricity structure.

Many countries have worked out their development planning and incentives policy for wind power to accelerate the technology improvement and market penetration. For the commercialized sets, its single capacity has risen from 55kW to 1650kW and the production cost has decreased gradually. In 1998, the total installed capacity for the whole world has reached 9.6 million kW and is to be increased with an annual capacity of 2 million kW.