Wind power is the converting of wind energy into a form we can use, i.e. electricity, using wind generators. At the end of 2008, global production by wind-powered generators was 120.8 gigawatts.

Throughout history the wind has been used to power sailboats or converted into mechanical energy for pumping water or crushing grain, but the primary application of wind power these days is the production of electricity. Very large wind turbine collectives are typically connected to the local electric power grid, with lower capacity wind generators being used to provide electricity to rural areas. Electric providers increasingly buy back extra electricity produced by the lower capacity domestic generators. Generated wind energy as a power source is favored by many environmentalists as an alternative to fossil fuels, as it is everywhere, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and has less greenhouse emissions, although the construction of wind generating collectives is not universally welcomed due to their visual impact and other effects on the environment. The inconsistency of wind doesn't create challenges when using wind generators to supply a low proportion of actual usage. In an area where wind is to be used for a larger percentage of demand, additional costs for compensation of inconsistency are considered to be modest.

In recent years, the US has added more wind generated capacity to its electric grid than any other country; U.S. wind power capacity increased by 45% to 16.8 gigawatts in 2007 and surpassing Germany's nameplate capacity in 2008. California has been one of the incubators of the modern 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 build its advantage. At the end of 2008, the state had 7,116 MW capacity, which would have ranked it sixth worldwide if Texas were a separate nation.

Note: The total quantity of economically extractable energy 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 used from all sources in 2005. These numbers are in spite of the fact that not all the energy of the wind flowing past any given point can be extracted.