Lecture Notes 1 Air and Its Motion a "Weighty" Subject
                         Lecture Notes 2 Wind Velocity As Rate of Mass Flow
                         Lecture Notes 3 Ultimate Windpower - What is Really Possible?
                                                                 Lecture Notes 4 But Air is 816 Times Less Dense Than Water
                                                                 Lecture Notes 5 The Ghost of Bernoulli Lingers On

Lecture Notes 6     Conclusion

Wind energy is the technology of extracting the kinetic energy from extraordinarily large, in terms of both magnitude and mass, aerofluid flows, though unseen, provided by the wind. To enlist the help of Newtonian Mechanics in analyzing its potential is only natural and quite readily accomplished as has been seen here in an elementary way within this short series of notes. Energy, after all, is something accompanied by great weights and electrical quantities as implied by terms such as "millions of tons" and "thousands of megawatts".

What seems to have been done during much of the study and development of the technology of wind energy, though, is to divert attention to small, almost insignificant, aerodynamic intricacies and flow anomalies occurring at and near flow surfaces in coming to an understanding in detail of what is happening everywhere in the flow field without exception. When the flow can't be seen, mysterious behaviors are not readily explained and, in stopping to analyze each tree, the forest is at risk of being not given its due consideration. The delays caused by the penchant for making discoveries on the micro-scale is added to the difficulties that arise from the almost merciless scrutiny that windpower must bear under on the world stage as a new technology. Many are the captains of industry who are watching the future unfold with many a plan on how to capitalize on it.

So it is that the aerodynamics studies in wind energy draw outside attention as well. Frozen in rapt awe by the computer imagery and hardware test bed goings on, industrial management in steel, composites, and electrical and mechanical component fabrication as well as high finance nod heads and bow to the relatively unsophisticated wishes of the wind crowd, available to assist the spread of towering structures wherever they may be spread, filled as they are with components and systems developed throughout modern industry, structures that have yet to hold promise of actual significant and overwhelming change. Dazzled by computer-aided flow stream presentations furnished by canny academicians ( such as the one to the left of the vortices behind a Gurney microtab on the trailing edge of a blade provided courtesy of UCal Davis ), those who should have more sense congratulate each other on how fast the technology is advancing, a display reminding one more of the tail wagging the dog than vice versa.

Wind energy needs to remove itself from some of the trappings of aerodynamics minutiae that have accumulated over the years and to be allowed to run free, to not be tied to arcane and intricate flow concepts that have created a closed vocabulary of nomenclature and have set the designs of blade profiles and rotor configurations nearly in concrete. The ennui by and large associated now with what has been handed down may be why the word "theory" has fallen into disfavor even though it is "theory" when conceived afresh and given a hearing with receptive ears that provides the hopes on which the future depends.

It is the big picture that is in need of being conveyed with greater emphasis and thoroughness, the one where air and wind are described as the manifestations and presences in great quantity that they are rather than just what has always been implied by words with which they have been associated such as "empty" and "weather".

Much kindness and good will to everyone out there in wind energy. This concludes this series of website notes. "Dutchy" the Windmill