Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a form we can use, such as electrical power, by the use of wind generators. At the end of 2008, worldwide production by wind-powered generators was 120.8 gigawatts.

Wind energy has historically been used to power sailing vessels or converted into mechanical energy for pumping water or grinding grain, but the primary application of wind power today is the generation of electrical energy. Large scale wind turbine collectives are usually fed directly to the local electric power grid, with lower capacity wind generators providing power to rural places. Electric providers willingly purchase extra electrical power generated by the lower capacity domestic turbines. Wind generated power as a power source is a favorite of many environmentalists as a viable alternative to fossil fuels, as it is plentiful, renewable, widely available, non-toxic, and has lower amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, even though the building of wind generating collectives is not universally welcomed due to their visual impact and possible effects on the Eco-system. The intermittency of wind seldom creates difficulties when using wind power to provide a small proportion of total demand. When wind is to be used for a moderate percentage of community usage, additional costs for compensation of intermittency are thought to be modest.

In recent years, the United States has added more wind energy to its electric grid than any other country; U.S. wind energy production increased by 45% to 16.8 gigawatts in 2007 and overtaking Germany's production capacity in 2008. California was one of the innovators of the new age wind power industry, and led America in wind energy production for quite some time; by the end of 2006, however, Texas became the leading wind production state and today continues to extend its advantage. At the end of 2008, the state had 7,116 MW production capacity, which would have ranked it sixth worldwide if Texas were a separate country.

Note: The whole amount of economically extractable power available from the wind is considerably more than existing human energy use from all sources. An estimated 72 terawatts of wind energy on the Earth potentially can be commercially viable, compared to about 15 terawatts normal world energy consumed from all sources in 2005. These figures are in spite of the fact that not all the power of the wind flowing past a given point can be recovered.