How does a wind turbine work? As you can see from the illustration, wind moves across the blades and causes lift, much like an airplane wing does. Since the blades are connected to an alternator/generator/gearbox arrangement, this lift cause the blades to rotate, and in turn spin the generator. The generator then converts this rotational energy into electricity. From there, the electricity is either used directly, stored in batteries, or conditioned and put back into the power grid.

Source: U.S. Department of Energy