Wind power is the converting of wind energy into a form we can use, such as electricity, by the use of wind turbines. At the end of 2008, worldwide production by wind-powered generators was 120.8 gigawatts. Wind energy has historically been used to propel sailing vessels or converted into mechanical energy for moving water or grinding grain, but the primary use of wind power these days is the generation of electricity. Large scale wind turbine farms are usually fed directly to the local electric power grid, with lower capacity turbines being used to provide power to isolated areas. Electric providers increasingly purchase surplus electricity generated by small home size wind generators. Wind energy as an energy source is favored by many environmentalists as an alternative to petroleum products, as it is everywhere, renewable, globally distributed, non-toxic, and produces lower greenhouse emissions, even though the construction of wind generation farms is not universally applauded due to their and possible effects on the environment. The inconsistency of wind seldom creates difficulties when using wind turbines to supply a small proportion of total usage. When wind is considered for a moderate fraction of usage, additional costs for compensation of inconsistency are considered to be modest. Lately, the US has added more wind generated capacity to its transmission network than any other country; U.S. wind power capacity grew by 45% to 16.8 gigawatts in 2007 and overtaking Germany's production capacity in 2008. California has been one of the incubators of the modern wind generation industry, and has been the U.S. leader in wind energy production for many years; however, by the end of 2006, Texas became the leading wind production state and today continues to build its advantage. By the end of 2008, Texas had 7,116 MW capacity, which would have placed it sixth worldwide if Texas were a separate nation. Note: The total amount of economically extractable power available from the wind is considerably more than existing human power use from all sources. An estimated 72 terawatts of wind energy on the Earth potentially can be commercially viable, compared to about 15 terawatts average global energy used from all sources in 2005. These figures are in spite of the fact that not all the power of the wind flowing past any given point can be recovered.
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