Infographic: How wind power works

No, it's not the latest edition of SmartPlanet's "How It Works" series (read the first edition on wave power here), but another clever infographic from the folks at Column Five Media.

Ever wonder how wind power works, start to finish?

This detailed infographic:

• explains how the power is harvested, from gust to grid;
• lists the world's largest wind farms;
• elaborates on the world's installed power capacity;
• pegs how much the infrastructure costs per plant;
• details how much the entire industry is worth.

Data for the admittedly complicated infographic is culled from Greenpeace.org, ReinforcedPlastic.com, the American Wind Energy Association, the 2009 World Wide Energy Report, Biowatch.com and (gasp) Wikipedia.org.

Still, it's not a bad primer.

[via GOOD; Cha Cha]

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com