Windmill Power Technology
- From the sailing ships of the ancient Greeks, to the wind mills of early Holland, to the high-tech wind farms of American deserts--mankind has harnessed the power of the wind for centuries. The heyday of wind technology was between 1870 and 1930, when farmers across the United States used the wind for their water pumps. These small wind-powered turbines were common in rural America until economic programs of the New Deal brought grid-connected electricity to the country in the 1930s.
- A renewed interest in wind power technology during the energy crises of the 1970s prompted researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy to focus on large turbine designs. While these early machines proved unsuccessful, they did provide basics for turbine blade design principles. Between 1981 and 1986 California, fueled by state-provided tax incentives, installed 15,000 medium-size turbines and ushered in wind power’s modern era. In 1998, thanks to state and federal tax incentives and continued oil price increases, wind technology continued to grow in the United States, .
- Although the wind-power industry grew in the early 2000s, it suffered from the inconsistent nature of federal tax incentives. In 2006, a period of strengthened federal support for wind began, leading to several years of record growth. Today, wind power is the fastest growing source of electricity in the world. Wind energy installations increased by 36 percent between 2007 and 2008 worldwide. In the United States, during that same period, more wind power systems were installed than in the previous 20 years combined.
- In a non-renewable fossil fuel system, chemical energy from coal, oil or gas is converted first to heat through burning, and then to motion by heating water and creating steam to move a turbine that turns a generator, which produces electric energy. When generating renewable wind power electricity, the chemical and steam steps are eliminated. The energy of the wind turns the blades of the turbine, which turns a generator to produce electricity.
- Wind-power turbines are getting larger and more efficient. Located offshore and on large isolated tracks of land, large scale concentrations of hundreds of turbines called wind farms feed electricity directly into the utility grid. New technologies have become available to efficiently store some of this energy for use during periods when wind is not available.
