History of wind power
Encyclopedia
Wind power
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form of energy, such as using wind turbines to make electricity, windmills for mechanical power, windpumps for water pumping or drainage, or sails to propel ships....
has been used as long as humans have put sails into the wind. For more than two millennia wind-powered machines
Windmill
A windmill is a machine which converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Originally windmills were developed for milling grain for food production. In the course of history the windmill was adapted to many other industrial uses. An important...
have ground grain and pumped water. Wind power was widely available and not confined to the banks of fast-flowing streams, or later, requiring sources of fuel. Wind-powered pumps drained the polders of the Netherlands, and in arid regions such as the American mid-west or the Australian outback, wind pumps provided water for live stock and steam engines.
With the development of electric power, wind power found new applications in lighting buildings remote from centrally-generated power. Throughout the 20th century parallel paths developed distributed small wind plants suitable for farms or residences, and larger utility-scale wind generators that could be connected to electricity grids for remote use of power. Today wind powered generators operate in every size range between tiny plants for battery charging at isolated residences, up to near-gigawatt sized offshore wind farms that provide electricity to national electrical networks.
Antiquity
Sailing ship
The term sailing ship is now used to refer to any large wind-powered vessel. In technical terms, a ship was a sailing vessel with a specific rig of at least three masts, square rigged on all of them, making the sailing adjective redundant. In popular usage "ship" became associated with all large...
s have been using wind power for at least 5,500 years, and architects have used wind-driven natural ventilation
Natural ventilation
Natural ventilation is the process of supplying and removing air through an indoor space without using mechanical systems. It refers to the flow of external air to an indoor space as a result of pressure or temperatures differences. There are two types of natural ventilation occurring in...
in buildings since similarly ancient times. The use of wind to provide mechanical power came somewhat later in antiquity.
The Babylonia
Babylonia
Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...
n emperor Hammurabi
Hammurabi
Hammurabi Hammurabi Hammurabi (Akkadian from Amorite ʻAmmurāpi, "the kinsman is a healer", from ʻAmmu, "paternal kinsman", and Rāpi, "healer"; (died c...
planned to use wind power for his ambitious irrigation project in the 17th century BC.
The windwheel of the Greek engineer Heron of Alexandria in the 1st century AD is the earliest known instance of using a wind-driven wheel to power a machine. Another early example of a wind-driven wheel was the prayer wheel
Prayer wheel
A prayer wheel is a cylindrical "wheel" on a spindle made from metal, wood, stone, leather or coarse cotton. Traditionally, the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum is written in Sanskrit on the outside of the wheel. Also sometimes depicted are Dakinis, Protectors and very often the 8 auspicious symbols...
, which was used in ancient Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
since the 4th century.
Early Middle Ages
Windmill
A windmill is a machine which converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Originally windmills were developed for milling grain for food production. In the course of history the windmill was adapted to many other industrial uses. An important...
s were in use in Sistan
Sistan
Sīstān is a border region in eastern Iran , southwestern Afghanistan and northern tip of Southwestern Pakistan .-Etymology:...
, a region in Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
and bordering Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, at least by the 9th century and possibly as early as the 7th century. These "Panemone windmills" were vertical-axle windmills, which had long vertical driveshaft
Driveshaft
A drive shaft, driveshaft, driving shaft, propeller shaft, or Cardan shaft is a mechanical component for transmitting torque and rotation, usually used to connect other components of a drive train that cannot be connected directly because of distance or the need to allow for relative movement...
s with six to twelve rectangular sail
Windmill sail
Windmills are powered by their sails. Sails are found in different designs, from primitive common sails to the advanced patent sails.-Jib sails:...
s covered in reed matting or cloth. These windmills were used to grind corn and pump water
Windpump
A windpump is a windmill used for pumping water, either as a source of fresh water from wells, or for draining low-lying areas of land. Once a common fixture on farms in semi-arid areas, windpumps are still used today where electric power is not available or too expensive.-History:Windmills were...
, and in the gristmill
Gristmill
The terms gristmill or grist mill can refer either to a building in which grain is ground into flour, or to the grinding mechanism itself.- Early history :...
ing and sugarcane industries. The use of windmills became widespread use across the Middle East and Central Asia, and later spread to China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and India
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...
. Horizontal-axle windmills were later used extensively in Northwestern Europe to grind flour beginning in the 1180s, and many Dutch horizontal-axle windmills still exist. By 1000 AD, windmills were used to pump seawater for salt
Salt
In chemistry, salts are ionic compounds that result from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base. They are composed of cations and anions so that the product is electrically neutral...
-making in China and Sicily.
A wind-powered automata
Automaton
An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot. An alternative spelling, now obsolete, is automation.-Etymology:...
is known from the mid-8th century: wind-powered statue
Statue
A statue is a sculpture in the round representing a person or persons, an animal, an idea or an event, normally full-length, as opposed to a bust, and at least close to life-size, or larger...
s that "turned with the wind over the domes of the four gates and the palace complex of the Round City of Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
". The "Green Dome of the palace was surmounted by the statue of a horseman carrying a lance that was believed to point toward the enemy. This public spectacle of wind-powered statues had its private counterpart in the 'Abbasid
Abbasid
The Abbasid Caliphate or, more simply, the Abbasids , was the third of the Islamic caliphates. It was ruled by the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, who built their capital in Baghdad after overthrowing the Umayyad caliphate from all but the al-Andalus region....
palaces where automata of various types were predominantly displayed."
Late Middle Ages
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
appear in sources dating to the twelfth century. These early European windmills were horizontal-axle sunk post mills
Post mill
The post mill is the earliest type of European windmill. The defining feature is that the whole body of the mill that houses the machinery is mounted on a single vertical post, around which it can be turned to bring the sails into the wind. The earliest post mills in England are thought to have...
. The earliest certain reference to such a horizontal-axle windmill dates from 1185, in Weedley, Yorkshire, although a number of earlier but less certainly dated twelfth century European sources referring to windmills have also been adduced. While it is sometimes argued that crusaders may have been inspired by windmills in the Middle East, this is unlikely since the European horizontal-axle windmills were of significantly different design than the vertical-axle windmills of Afghanistan. Lynn White Jr., a specialist in medieval European technology, asserts that the European windmill was an "independent invention;" he argues that it is unlikely that the Afghanistan-style vertical-axle windmill had spread as far west as the Levant during the Crusader period. 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. In addition, windmills, unlike water mills, were not rendered inoperable by the freezing of water in the winter.
By the 14th century Dutch windmill
Windmill
A windmill is a machine which converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Originally windmills were developed for milling grain for food production. In the course of history the windmill was adapted to many other industrial uses. An important...
s were in use to drain areas of the Rhine River delta.
18th century
Windmills were used to pump water for salt making on the island of BermudaBermuda
Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...
, and on Cape Cod
Cape Cod
Cape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...
during the American revolution.
19th century
In DenmarkDenmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. 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.
In the American midwest between 1850 and 1900, a large number of small windmills, perhaps six million, were installed on farms to operate irrigation pumps. Firms such as Star, Eclipse, Fairbanks-Morse
Fairbanks-Morse
Fairbanks Morse and Company was a manufacturing company in the late 19th and early 20th century. Originally a weighing scale manufacturer, it later diversified into pumps, engines, windmills, locomotives and industrial supplies until it was merged in 1958...
and Aeromotor became famed suppliers in North and South America.
The first windmill used for the production of electricity was built in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
in July 1887 by Prof James Blyth of Anderson's College, Glasgow (the precursor of Strathclyde University). Blyth's 33 feet (10.1 m) high, cloth-sailed wind turbine was installed in the garden of his holiday cottage at Marykirk
Marykirk
Marykirk is a small village in Aberdeenshire, Scotland next to the border with the county of Angus at the River North Esk.The village is approximately 6 miles ENE of Montrose at the southern end of the Howe of the Mearns. The road bridge carrying the A937 over the River North Esk is a substantial...
in Kincardineshire
Kincardineshire
The County of Kincardine, also known as Kincardineshire or The Mearns was a local government county on the coast of northeast Scotland...
and was used to charge accumulator
Accumulator
Accumulator may refer to:* Accumulator , in a CPU, a processor register for storing intermediate results* Accumulator , an apparatus for storing energy or power...
s developed by the Frenchman Camille Alphonse Faure, to power the lighting in the cottage, thus making it the first house in the world to have its electricity supplied by wind power. Blyth offered the surplus electricity to the people of Maykirk for lighting the main street, however, they turned down the offer as they thought electricity was "the work of the devil." Although he later built a wind machine to supply emergency power to the local Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary and Dispensary of Montrose
Montrose, Angus
Montrose is a coastal resort town and former royal burgh in Angus, Scotland. It is situated 38 miles north of Dundee between the mouths of the North and South Esk rivers...
the invention never really caught on as the technology was not considered to be economically viable.
Across the Atlantic, in Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
a larger and heavily engineered machine was designed and constructed in 1887-1888 by Charles F. Brush
Charles F. Brush
Charles Francis Brush was a U.S. inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist.-Biography:Born in Euclid Township, Ohio, Brush was raised on a farm about 10 miles from downtown Cleveland...
, this was built by his engineering company at his home and operated from 1886 until 1900. The Brush wind turbine had a rotor 56 feet (17 m) in diameter and was mounted on a 60 foot (18 m) tower. Although large by today's standards, the machine was only rated at 12 kW; it turned relatively slowly since it had 144 blades. The connected dynamo was used either to charge a bank of batteries or to operate up to 100 incandescent light bulb
Incandescent light bulb
The incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe makes light by heating a metal filament wire to a high temperature until it glows. The hot filament is protected from air by a glass bulb that is filled with inert gas or evacuated. In a halogen lamp, a chemical process...
s, three arc lamps, and various motors in Brush's laboratory. The machine fell into disuse after 1900 when electricity became available from Cleveland's central stations, and was abandoned in 1908.
In the 1890s a Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
scientist, Poul la Cour
Poul la Cour
Poul la Cour was a Danish scientist, inventor and educationalist. Today la Cour is especially recognized for his early work on wind power, both experimental work on aerodynamics and practical implementation of wind power plants. He worked most of his life at Askov Folk High School where he...
, constructed wind turbines to generate electricity, which was then used to produce hydrogen
Hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. With an average atomic weight of , hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75% of the Universe's chemical elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly...
for experiments and light and the Askov Highschool. His last windmill of 1896 later became the local powerplant of the village of Askov.
20th century
Development in the 20th century might be usefully divided into the periods:- 1900–1973, when widespread use of individual wind generators competed against fossil fuel plants and centrally-generated electricity
- 1973–onward, when the oil price crisis1973 oil crisisThe 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...
spurred investigation of non-petroleum energy sources.
Danish development
In Denmark wind power was an important part of a decentralized electrification in the first quarter of the 20th century, partly because of Poul la Cour from his first practical development in 1891 at Askov. By 1908 there were 72 wind-driven electric generators from 5 kW to 25 kW. The largest machines were on 24 m (79 ft) towers with four-bladed 23 m (75 ft) diameter rotors. In 1957 Johannes Juul installed a 24 m diameter wind turbine at GedserGedser
Gedser is a town at the southern tip of the Danish island of Falster in the Guldborgsund Municipality in Sjælland region. It is the southernmost town in Denmark. The town has a population of 809...
, which ran from 1957 until 1967. This was a three-bladed, horizontal-axis, upwind, stall-regulated turbine similar to those now used for commercial wind power development.
A giant change took place in 1978 when the world's first multi-megawatt wind turbine was constructed. It pioneered many technologies used in modern wind turbines and allowed Vestas, Siemens and others to get the parts they needed. Especially important was the novel wing construction using help from German aeronautics specialists. The power plant was capable of delivering 2MW, had a tubular tower, pitch controlled wings and three blades. It was built by the teachers and students of the Tvind school. Before completion these "amateurs" were much ridiculed. The turbine still runs today and looks almost identical to the newest most modern mills.
Danish commercial wind power development stressed incremental improvements in capacity and efficiency based on extensive serial production of turbines, in contrast with development models requiring extensive steps in unit size based primarily on theoretical extrapolation. A practical consequence is that all commercial wind turbines resemble the Danish model, a light-weight three-blade upwind design.
Farm power and isolated plants
In 1927 the brothers Joe Jacobs and Marcellus Jacobs opened a factory, Jacobs WindJacobs Wind
Jacobs Wind Electric Co. Inc. is the oldest small wind turbine company in the United States. It has been designing consumer wind systems sized to the changing distributed electric loads of their periods since the mid 1920s....
in Minneapolis to produce wind turbine generators for farm use. These would typically be used for lighting or battery charging, on farms out of reach of central-station electricity and distribution lines. In 30 years the firm produced about 30,000 small wind turbines, some of which ran for many years in remote locations in Africa and on the Richard Evelyn Byrd
Richard Evelyn Byrd
Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, Jr., USN was a naval officer who specialized in feats of exploration. He was a pioneering American aviator, polar explorer, and organizer of polar logistics...
expedition to Antarctica. 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.
In 1931 the Darrieus wind turbine
Darrieus wind turbine
The Darrieus wind turbine is a type of vertical axis wind turbine used to generate electricity from the energy carried in the wind. The turbine consists of a number of aerofoils usually—but not always—vertically mounted on a rotating shaft or framework...
was invented, with its vertical axis providing a different mix of design tradeoffs from the conventional horizontal-axis wind turbine. 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.
By the 1930s windmills were widely used to generate electricity on farms in the United States where distribution systems had not yet been installed. Used to replenish battery storage banks, these machines typically had generating capacities of a few hundred watts to several kilowatts. Beside providing farm power, they were also used for isolated applications such as electrifying
Cathodic protection
Cathodic protection is a technique used to control the corrosion of a metal surface by making it the cathode of an electrochemical cell. The simplest method to apply CP is by connecting the metal to be protected with another more easily corroded "sacrificial metal" to act as the anode of the...
bridge structures to prevent corrosion. In this period, high tensile steel was cheap, and windmills were placed atop prefabricated open steel lattice tower
Lattice tower
A lattice tower or truss tower is a freestanding framework tower. They can be used as electricity pylons especially for voltages above 100 kilovolts, as a radio tower or as an observation tower....
s.
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. It had a peak output of 200 watts. Blade speed was regulated by curved air brakes near the hub that deployed at excessive rotational velocities. These machines were still being manufactured in the United States during the 1980s. In 1936, the U.S. started a rural electrification
Rural Utilities Service
is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture , one of the federal executive departments of the United States government charged with providing public utilities to rural areas in the United States via public-private partnerships...
project that killed the natural market for wind-generated power, since network power distribution provided a farm with more dependable usable energy for a given amount of capital investment.
In Australia, the Dunlite Corporation built hundreds of small wind generators to provide power at isolated postal service stations and farms. These machines were manufactured from 1936 until 1970.
Utility-scale turbines
A forerunner of modern horizontal-axis utility-scale wind generators was the WIME-3D in service in BalaklavaBalaklava
Balaklava is a former city on the Crimean peninsula and part of the city of Sevastopol which carries a special administrative status in Ukraine. It was a city in its own right until 1957 when it was formally incorporated into the municipal borders of Sevastopol by the Soviet government...
, near Yalta
Yalta
Yalta is a city in Crimea, southern Ukraine, on the north coast of the Black Sea.The city is located on the site of an ancient Greek colony, said to have been founded by Greek sailors who were looking for a safe shore on which to land. It is situated on a deep bay facing south towards the Black...
, USSR from 1931 until 1942. This was a 100 kW generator on a 30 m (100 ft) tower, connected to the local 6.3 kV distribution system. It had a three-bladed 30 metre rotor on a steel lattice tower. It was reported to have an annual load factor
Load factor
Load factor may refer to:* Load factor , the ratio of the lift of an aircraft to its weight* Load factor , the ratio of the number of records to the number of addresses within a data structure...
of 32 per cent, not much different from current wind machines.
In 1941 the world's first megawatt-size wind turbine
Smith-Putnam wind turbine
In 1941 the Smith-Putnam wind turbine, the world's first megawatt-size wind turbine, was connected to the local electrical distribution system on Grandpa's Knob in Castleton, Vermont, USA. It was designed by Palmer Cosslett Putnam and manufactured by the S. Morgan Smith Company...
was connected to the local electrical distribution system on the mountain known as Grandpa's Knob in Castleton, Vermont
Castleton, Vermont
Castleton is a town in Rutland County, Vermont, United States. Castleton is about to the west of Rutland, and about east of the New York/Vermont state border. The town had a population of 4,717 at the 2010 census. Castleton State College is located there, with roots dating to 1787...
, USA. It was designed by Palmer Cosslett Putnam
Palmer Cosslett Putnam
Palmer Cosslett Putnam was an American consulting engineer and wind power pioneer, the son of George Haven Putnam and Emily Putnam . Putnam graduated from MIT in 1924 as a geologist after serving in the RAF during World War I...
and manufactured by the S. Morgan Smith Company. 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. No similar-sized unit was to repeat this "bold experiment" for about forty years.
Fuel-saving turbines
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 Insel Neuwerk were partly powered by an 18 kW wind turbine 15 metres in diameter, to economize on diesel fuel. This installation ran for around 20 years before being replaced by a submarine cable to the mainland.The Station d'Etude de l'Energie du Vent at Nogent-le-Roi
Nogent-le-Roi
Nogent-le-Roi is a commune in the department of Eure-et-Loir in the Centre region in northern France.It is located some 20 kilometres north of Chartres and a shorter distance to the southeast of Dreux.-Population:-Royal deaths:...
in France operated an experimental 800 KVA wind turbine from 1956 to 1966.
US development
From 1974 through the mid-1980s the United States government worked with industry to advance the technology and enable large commercial wind turbines. The NASA wind turbinesNASA wind turbines
Starting in 1975, NASA developed technologies and was the technical manager for the United States Department of Energy and the United States Department of Interior on a program to develop utility-scale wind turbines for the production of electric power, in response to the increase in oil prices.A...
were developed under a program to create a utility-scale wind turbine industry in the U.S. With funding from the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
and later the United States Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
(DOE), a total of 13 experimental wind turbines were put into operation, in four major wind turbine designs. 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. The large wind turbines developed under this effort set several world records for diameter and power output. The MOD-2 wind turbine cluster of three turbines produced 7.5 megawatts of power in 1981. 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. It demonstrated an availability of 95 percent, an unparalleled level for a new first-unit wind turbine. The MOD-5B had the first large-scale variable speed drive train and a sectioned, two-blade rotor that enabled easy transport of the blades. The 4 megawatt WTS-4 held the world record for power output for over 20 years. Although the later units were sold commercially, none of these two-bladed machines were ever put into mass production. When oil prices declined by a factor of three from 1980 through the early 1990s, many turbine manufacturers, both large an small, left the business. 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."
Later, in the 1980s, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
provided tax rebates for wind power. These rebates funded the first major use of wind power for utility electricity. These machines, gathered in large wind parks such as at Altamont Pass
Altamont Pass
Altamont Pass, formerly Livermore Pass, is a mountain pass in the Diablo Range between Livermore in the Livermore Valley and Tracy in the San Joaquin Valley in Northern California...
would be considered small and un-economic by modern wind power development standards.
Self-sufficiency and back-to-the-land
In the 1970s many people began to desire a self-sufficient life-style. Solar cellSolar cell
A solar cell is a solid state electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect....
s were too expensive for small-scale electrical generation, so some turned to windmills. At first they built ad-hoc designs using wood and automobile parts. Most people discovered that a reliable wind generator is a moderately complex engineering project, well beyond the ability of most amateurs. Some began to search for and rebuild farm wind generators from the 1930s, of which Jacobs Wind Electric Company machines were especially sought after. Hundreds of Jacobs machines were reconditioned and sold during the 1970s.
All major horizontal axis turbines today rotate the same way (clockwise) to present a coherent view. However, early turbines rotated counter-clockwise like the old windmills, but a shift occurred from 1978 and on. The individualist-minded blade supplier Økær made the decision to change direction in order to be distinguished from the collective
Collective
A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together on a specific project to achieve a common objective...
Tvind
Tvind
Tvind is an international school centre in the small town of Ulfborg in Denmark, founded in 1970. The schools in Denmark are a progressive part of the Danish educational landscape and have educated more than 40,000 students over the years...
and their small wind turbines. Some of the blade customers were companies that later evolved into Vestas
Vestas
Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines. It is the largest in the world, but due to very rapid growth of its competitors, its market share decreased from 28% in 2007 to 12.5% in 2009...
, Siemens
Siemens
Siemens may refer toSiemens, a German family name carried by generations of telecommunications industrialists, including:* Werner von Siemens , inventor, founder of Siemens AG...
, Enercon
Enercon
Enercon GmbH, based in Aurich, Germany, is the fourth-largest wind turbine manufacturer in the world and has been the market leader in Germany since the mid-nineties. Enercon has production facilities in Germany , Sweden, Brazil, India, Canada, Turkey and Portugal...
and Nordex
Nordex
Nordex is a German company that designs, sells and manufactures wind turbines. The domicile is located in the German city of Hamburg, production takes place in Rostock, China and Jonesboro, Arkansas. The company was founded in 1985 in Give, Denmark. Since then the company steadily grew...
. Public demand required that all turbines rotate the same way, and the success of these companies made clockwise the new standard.
Following experience with reconditioned 1930s wind turbines, a new generation of American manufacturers started building and selling small wind turbines not only for battery-charging but also for interconnection to electricity networks. An early example would be Enertech Corporation of Norwich, Vermont, which began building 1.8 kW models in the early 1980s.
In the 1990s, as aesthetics and durability became more important, turbines were placed atop tubular steel or reinforced concrete towers. Small generators are connected to the tower on the ground, then the tower is raised into position. Larger generators are hoisted into position atop the tower and there is a ladder or staircase inside the tower to allow technicians to reach and maintain the generator, while protected from the weather.
21st century
As the 21st century began, fossil fuel was still relatively cheap, but rising concerns over energy securityEnergy security
Energy security is a term for an association between national security and the availability of natural resources for energy consumption. Access to cheap energy has become essential to the functioning of modern economies. However, the uneven distribution of energy supplies among countries has led...
, global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
, and eventual fossil fuel depletion
Peak oil
Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. This concept is based on the observed production rates of individual oil wells, projected reserves and the combined production rate of a field...
led to an expansion of interest in all available forms of renewable energy
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...
. The fledgling commercial wind power industry began expanding at a robust growth rate of about 30% per year, driven by the ready availability of large wind resources, and falling costs due to improved technology and wind farm management.
The steady run-up in oil prices after 2003 led to increasing fears that peak oil
Peak oil
Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. This concept is based on the observed production rates of individual oil wells, projected reserves and the combined production rate of a field...
was imminent, further increasing interest in commercial wind power. Even though wind power generates electricity rather than liquid fuels, and thus is not an immediate substitute for petroleum in most applications (especially transport), fears over petroleum shortages only added to the urgency to expand wind power. Earlier oil crisis had already caused many utility and industrial users of petroleum to shift to coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
or natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
. Natural gas began having its own supply problems, and wind power showed potential for replacing natural gas in electricity generation.
Floating wind turbine technology
Offshore wind power began to expand beyond fixed-bottom, shallow-water turbines beginning late in the first decade of the 2000s. The world's first operational deep-water large-capacity floating wind turbineFloating wind turbine
A floating wind turbine is an offshore wind turbine mounted on a floating structure that allows the turbine to generate electricity in water depths where bottom-mounted towers are not feasible...
, Hywind, became operational in the North Sea
North Sea
In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...
off Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
in late 2009
at a cost of some 400 million kroner (around US$62 million) to build and deploy.
These floating turbines are a very different construction technology—closer to floating oil rigs rather—than traditional fixed-bottom, shallow-water monopile foundations that are used in the other large offshore wind farms to date.
By late 2011, Japan announced plans to build a multiple-unit floating wind farm, with six 2-megawatt turbines, off the Fukushima coast
Fukushima Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region on the island of Honshu. The capital is the city of Fukushima.-History:Until the Meiji Restoration, the area of Fukushima prefecture was known as Mutsu Province....
of northeast Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
where the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
The is a series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, and releases of radioactive materials at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. The plant comprises six separate boiling water reactors originally designed by General Electric ,...
has created a scarcity of electric power.
After the evaluation phase is complete in 2016, "Japan plans to build as many as 80 floating wind turbines off Fukushima by 2020" at a cost of some 10-20 billion Yen.