A Report from Energy Ant—My Trip to Cape Cod To See a Wind Turbine in Hull, Massachusetts

I spent a week of my summer in windy Hull, Massachusetts. I was there with teachers, from around the country, who had come to learn all about energy. We spent a day touring different energy-related sites on Cape Cod, a peninsula off of Massachusetts. Take a look on a map, and see if you can find it!

And here's where we went…

The first stop was at the town of Hull's wind turbine. It's huge! If you look at the photo, you will see the bottom of the wind turbine we visited. (Can you find me too? Hint: I am hiding from the rain.) The bottom is really wide to hold up the big blades at the top that turn and produce electricity. Some of these blades can be as long as 130 feet (40 meters) long. When the wind blows, the blades on the turbine spin—and in turn, this spins a device, called a generator, that produces electricity that is sent to houses in the area.

Wind turbines are the modern-day version of windmills. While in the olden days, windmills turned kinetic energy from the wind into mechanical energy for grinding grain, nowadays, wind turbines turn mechanical energy into electrical energy for a variety of uses.

Wind is a great energy source because it is renewable. In other words, we will not run out of wind—unless it just stops blowing all together. But wind turbines can only be placed where the wind is strong much of the time. If there is no wind, or it is not strong enough, the turbine cannot produce electricity.

You can learn more about wind energy on this site's wind page.