Build a Wind Turbine Infographic
Have you ever wondered how a modern wind turbine is built, or how it turns wind into the electricity that flows through the grid and into your home? This interactive infographic lets you find out. Drag seventeen real turbine components into place, in the same order engineers use on a real construction site, and watch your turbine come to life. Once it’s complete, you can run a live simulation: change the wind speed, see the blades spin, and read the power output as a real turbine would produce it.
Loading wind turbine game…
How to Play: In Three Steps
- Build the turbine. A highlighted part appears in the tray on the side of the game. Drag it onto the matching outline on the landscape. It will snap into place. Repeat until all seventeen parts are assembled: foundation, tower, internal machinery, then the rotor and blades.
- Watch the celebration. When you place the last blade, the camera pulls back to show the full turbine in its landscape and a short celebration plays.
- Explore the simulation. Press Start to spin the blades. Drag the wind speed slider to see how rotor speed and power output change. Click any part of the finished turbine to read about what it does and the engineering behind it.
Tips for first-time players
- Parts must be placed in the correct order. The game shows you the next part to place, just as a real construction site builds from the foundation upwards and from the inside out.
- Use the zoom controls in the corner of the canvas (or the mouse wheel, or pinch on a touchscreen) to zoom in for detail and out to see the whole turbine.
- On a phone or tablet, the parts tray sits below the canvas. Drag with your finger; the game responds to touch exactly like a mouse.
- Keyboard only? Press Tab to focus the active part, then Enter to place it. Arrow keys pan the canvas; + and − zoom; 0 resets the view.
- Need to start over? The Reset button at the top of the game starts a fresh build at any time.
What you’ll learn
As you play, you’ll discover how a modern wind turbine is structured and how each component contributes to producing clean electricity:
- The foundation resists enormous overturning forces caused by wind pushing on the rotor.
- The tower raises the rotor into faster, steadier wind. Modern towers reach 80 metres or more.
- The gearbox and generator turn slow rotor rotation into mains-frequency electricity.
- The blades work like aircraft wings, generating lift that drives the rotor.
- The controller matches output to the grid and shuts the turbine down safely in extreme winds.
By the end of the simulation, you’ll have a working feel for what determines a wind turbine’s power output and how many homes a single turbine can power. A typical 3 MW onshore turbine running at rated wind speed produces enough electricity for around 9,000 homes.
Ready? Start building.
Works on desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile phones. Try landscape orientation for the best view.