Wind turbine blade speed is typically 10-15 rpm. This is because the centrifugal forces (among others) acting on the blade limit the speed at which the materials will remain structurally intact. That kind of rpm doesn't sound like much, does it? Remember that the blades describe a diameter of nearly 100 m - which means the outermost tip is moving at roughly 375 km/h.
The generator inside the nacelle (that little "house" on top of the pole) has to be physically small - but also be able to output the required power (kilowatt). Machine volume is directly related to the amount of torque - so a small volume with a lot of power requires a high speed. The actual "design speed" of the generator is a function of the local power grid - North America uses 60 Hz, so truly synchronous speeds are going to be (120 * 60 / poles). That means a North American wind turbine will have the generator shaft turning at something close to 900, 1200, or 1800 rpm (8 pole, 6 pole, or 4 pole) depending on design. So how do we get from the high-speed of the generator shaft to the low speed of the blade shaft?
The answer is mechanical advantage in the form of gearing. A wind tower has a HUGE gearbox located just inside the "nose" of the nacelle, close to the blades. The gearing is done in multiple steps because of the very high "final drive" ratio. What is the final drive ratio? It is the ratio of generator to blade speed - so perhaps 1200-to-10, which is the same as saying 120-to-1. For comparison purposes, a car with a high-torque gear train will have a final drive ratio of around 3 to 1.
Industrial processes work the other way: the "driver" is the high speed motor, powering a low-speed process (such as the machines used to roll metal). The same gearing approach works for them too - the gearbox does not care which direction the mechanical advantage is used.
Converting energy to motion for more than half a century