The Opportunities and Constraints of Wind Energy

Abstract

One of the most dominant energy sources is the fossil energy. However, fossil energy based power plant is one of the primary contributors of greenhouse gas which is the main cause of global warming. Besides that, the supply of fossil energy keeps on depleting along the year. Because of that, the availability of New and Renewable Energy (NRE) sources to overcome these problems are vital. Up until this moment, several types of NRE such as water energy, geothermal, and bioenergy have been utilized. However, the utilization capacity is pretty low and needs to be enhanced, either by optimizing the existing NRE or by exploring other type of non-fossil energy source as alternative NREs. One of the non fossil energy sources that have the potential is the wind energy. Indonesia has many areas that have the potential for developing PLTB because they have an average annual wind speed of 3.4-4.5 seconds or have an energy between 200 kWh/m to 1000 kWh/m. In operation, the exhaust emissions produced by wind power plants in the form of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and atmospheric pollutants are less when compared to power plants using fossil fuels. In addition, carbon dioxide emissions from wind power plants are only one hundredth of that of fossil fuels. Thus, it can be said that the development of electricity with wind power has good prospects to be applied in several regions in Indonesia.