page_title: Wind
section_title: Power source
hierarchical_section_title: Wind / Usage / Power source
caption_attribution_description: English: Modern wind energy plant in rural scenery. Français&#160;: Une éolienne moderne dans un paysage rural.
context_page_description: Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale. On the surface of the Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement of air. In outer space, solar wind is the movement of gases or charged particles from the Sun through space, while planetary wind is the outgassing of light chemical elements from a planet's atmosphere into space. Winds are commonly classified by their spatial scale, their speed, the types of forces that cause them, the regions in which they occur, and their effect. The strongest observed winds on a planet in the Solar System occur on Neptune and Saturn. Winds have various aspects: velocity; the density of the gas involved; energy content or wind energy. The wind is also an important means of transportation for seeds and small birds; with time things can travel thousands of miles in the wind.
  In meteorology, winds are often referred to according to their strength, and the direction from which the wind is blowing. Short bursts of high speed wind are termed gusts. Strong winds of intermediate duration are termed squalls. Long-duration winds have various names associated with their average strength, such as breeze, gale, storm, and hurricane.
context_section_description: Historically, the ancient Sinhalese of Anuradhapura and in other cities around Sri Lanka used the monsoon winds to power furnaces as early as 300 BCE. The furnaces were constructed on the path of the monsoon winds to exploit the wind power, to bring the temperatures inside up to 1,200 °C (2,190 °F). A rudimentary windmill was used to power an organ in the first century CE. The first practical windmills were later built in Sistan, Afghanistan, from the 7th century CE. These were vertical-axle windmills, which had long vertical driveshafts with rectangle shaped blades. Made of six to twelve sails covered in reed matting or cloth material, these windmills were used to grind corn and draw up water, and were used in the gristmilling and sugarcane industries. Horizontal-axle windmills were later used extensively in Northwestern Europe to grind flour beginning in the 1180s, and many Dutch windmills still exist. High altitude wind power is the focus of over 30 companies worldwide using tethered technology rather than ground-hugging compressive-towers. Oil is being saved by using wind for powering cargo ships by use of the mechanical energy converted from the wind's kinetic energy using very large kites.
caption: This wind turbine generates electricity from wind power.
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