A question about energy conservation

[faymalaka]

Imagine you have a wind turbine that was connected to some sort of device. say a freaking massive, high energy using blender.

Now there was a constant breeze blowing across the wind turbines, in the same direction resulting in a uniform amount of power being produced by the turbine. The energy from the wind would spin the turbine which would produce the electricity that powered the blender.

All energy from the wind would go to the blender, except for a few losses due to friction etc.

now say i came up and cut the wire connecting the blender to the turbine. The wind would still blow across the blades, the turbine would still spin, where would that energy that was once used to power the blender go?

 

[torquil]

The turbine would now not offer as much resistance to the wind due to the electrical changes in the dynamo, and its rotational speed would therefore increase slightly. This would cause an increased rotational speed of the "propeller" and a higher amount of frictional loss.

 

[cjl]

Also, with the turbine free-spinning, the outflow velocity from the turbine would be higher, so not as much energy would be extracted from the air.

Basically:

1) Less energy would be removed from the air
2) The energy which was removed from the air would simply be dissipated through frictional losses, drag on the propeller, and other similar heat-generating processes.