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The Epic Interactive Encyclopedia 1998
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Epic Interactive Encyclopedia, The - 1998 Edition (1998)(Epic Marketing).iso
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Wind_turbine
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1992-09-02
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Windmill of advanced aerodynamic design
connected to an electricity generator and
used in wind-power installations. Wind
turbines can be either large propeller-type
rotors mounted on a tall tower, or flexible
metal strips fixed to a vertical axle at top
and bottom. The world's largest wind turbine
is on Hawaii, in the Pacific Ocean. It has
two blades 50 metres long on top of a tower
20 storeys high. An example of a propeller
turbine is found at Tvind in Denmark and has
an output of some 2 megawatts. Other machines
use novel rotors, such as the `egg-beater'
design developed at Sandia Laboratories in
New Mexico, USA. A smaller generator has been
built on the Orkney Islands, Scotland. It has
30-metre blades on a 37-metre tower. The
largest wind turbine on mainland Britain is
at Richborough on the Kent coast. The
three-bladed turbine, which is 35 metres
across, produces 1 megawatt of power.
Britain's largest vertical-axis wind turbine
has two 24 m/80 ft blades and began operating
in Dyfed, Wales, 1990.