History of wind power
"[6] Although he later built a wind turbine to supply emergency power to the local Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary, and Dispensary of Montrose, the invention never really caught on, as the technology was not considered to be economically viable.
The connected dynamo was used either to charge a bank of batteries or to operate up to 100 incandescent light bulbs, three arc lamps, and various motors in Brush's laboratory.
The Babylonian emperor Hammurabi planned to use wind power for his ambitious irrigation project in the 17th century BC.
[27] In medieval England rights to waterpower sites were often confined to nobility and clergy, so wind power was an important resource to a new middle class.
Windmills were used to pump water for salt making on the island of Bermuda, and on Cape Cod during the American revolution.
[30] The first wind turbine used for the production of electricity was built in Scotland in July 1887 by Prof James Blyth of Anderson's College, Glasgow (the precursor of the University of Strathclyde).
[6] Blyth's 10 m high, cloth-sailed wind turbine was installed in the garden of his holiday cottage at Marykirk in Kincardineshire and was used to charge accumulators developed by the Frenchman Camille Alphonse Faure, to power the lighting in the cottage,[6] thus making it the first house in the world to have its electricity supplied by wind power.
"[6] Although he later built a wind turbine to supply emergency power to the local Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary and Dispensary of Montrose, the invention never really caught on as the technology was not considered to be economically viable.
The connected dynamo was used either to charge a bank of batteries or to operate up to 100 incandescent light bulbs, three arc lamps, and various motors in Brush's laboratory.
[35] In Denmark there were about 2,500 windmills by 1900, used for mechanical loads such as pumps and mills, producing an estimated combined peak power of about 30 MW.
[38] Many other manufacturers produced small wind turbine sets for the same market, including companies called Wincharger, Miller Airlite, Universal Aeroelectric, Paris-Dunn, Airline and Winpower.
The vertical orientation accepts wind from any direction with no need for adjustments, and the heavy generator and gearbox equipment can rest on the ground instead of atop a tower.
Used to replenish battery storage banks, these machines typically had generating capacities of a few hundred watts to several kilowatts.
The most widely used small wind generator produced for American farms in the 1930s was a two-bladed horizontal-axis machine manufactured by the Wincharger Corporation.
In Australia, the Dunlite Corporation built hundreds of small wind generators to provide power at isolated postal service stations and farms.
[43] In 1941 the world's first megawatt-size wind turbine was connected to the local electrical distribution system on the mountain known as Grandpa's Knob in Castleton, Vermont, United States.
This 1.25 MW Smith–Putnam turbine operated for 1100 hours before a blade failed at a known weak point, which had not been reinforced due to war-time material shortages.
[40] During the Second World War, small wind generators were used on German U-boats to recharge submarine batteries as a fuel-conserving measure.
In 1946 the lighthouse and residences on the island of Neuwerk were partly powered by an 18 kW wind turbine 15 metres in diameter, to economize on diesel fuel.
[44] The Station d'Etude de l'Energie du Vent at Nogent-le-Roi in France operated an experimental 800 KVA wind turbine from 1956 to 1966.
From 1974 through the mid-1980s the United States government worked with industry to advance the technology and enable large commercial wind turbines.
This research and development program pioneered many of the multi-megawatt turbine technologies in use today, including: steel tube towers, variable-speed generators, composite blade materials, partial-span pitch control, as well as aerodynamic, structural, and acoustic engineering design capabilities.
In 1987, the MOD-5B was the largest single wind turbine operating in the world with a rotor diameter of nearly 100 meters and a rated power of 3.2 megawatts.
The commercial sales of the NASA/Boeing Mod-5B, for example, came to an end in 1987 when Boeing Engineering and Construction announced they were "planning to leave the market because low oil prices are keeping windmills for electricity generation uneconomical.
A practical consequence is that all commercial wind turbines resemble the Danish model, a light-weight three-blade upwind design.
The individualist-minded blade supplier Økær made the decision to change direction in order to be distinguished from the collective Tvind and their small wind turbines.
As a result, European wind original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have faced issues with profitability with market share moving to China.
[67] The initial evaluation phase was due to be completed in 2016, "Japan plans to build as many as 80 floating wind turbines off Fukushima by 2020"[67] at a cost of some 10–20 billion Yen.
[68] However, approximately 60 billion Yen were ultimately spent by the Japanese government on test wind projects at Fukushima between November 2013 and December 2020 when it was decided that a combination of technical issues and lack of commerciality justified closing and decommissioning the structures as of April 2021.
[69] Airborne wind energy systems use airfoils or turbines supported in the air by buoyancy or by aerodynamic lift.
