Go Greener Tips

When building windmills, people think about how to increase their efficiency. To do that, they examine the mechanism. The most important parts of a windmill are, of course, windmill blades.

The first thing to consider when talking about windmill blades is their number. The higher number of blades a windmill has, the harder will be for it to work. The old ones used to have four extremely bulky blades. Many of them were use in grain grinding. These days, the most recent windmills have two or three blades.

The length is significant also. If a blade is longer, it covers a bigger surface when it rotates, so they can catch more wind with each rotation. This may lead to more torque. To protect the windmill blades we mustn’t forget about their surface. If we provide them with efficient maintenance, they will last longer and will also be more productive.

Additionally, the shape of windmill blades influences their rotation. There’re a few different shapes of windmill blades: the flat, rectangular ones, the wing shaped ones and the ones with both edges tapered to a slim line or both edges rounded like the ones of a plane wing. In the case of the horizontal axis windmills, the wing shape has proved to be by far the most effective one. The vertical axis windmills works very well with all the shapes of the windmill’s blades, but the best performance is given by the flat ones and the ones with both edges rounded.

About the material with which the windmill blades are made out of, if we think about the old ones, they were usually made out of wood. Although those windmill blades are made of wood, their structure modified over time. They’re much lighter now so that they can spin quicker. An usual material which brings a high performance due to its sharp edges and its light weight is carbon fiber. Another material that’s light, but also low-priced is PVC. It’s a synthetic material often used for windmill blades. New materials are always being tested, in the hopes of finding a more affordable, more efficient solution.

Windmill blades are constantly developing, even though they appeared a very long time ago. At their early stages they were somehow inefficient, but people learned to develop them and to make the windmills a desirable source of energy. A lot more shapes and materials have and will be for windmill blades and people begin using more and more this alternative source of energy that will not only save our money, but also our environment.