History of Wind Generated Power

With the rising costs of energy derived from fossil fuels, many consumers are interested in alternative sources of energy. Unfortunately the market trend tells us that little or no relief in oil prices is in sight. A great source of energy can be harnessed from the wind with windmills generating electricity. Below is a brief history of wind power, and how it came to be.

Wind energy has been exploited for many, many years. Nobody knows for sure when man started to use wind power to grind flour or pump water, but it is believed that the windmill first appearance in the Persian region. From there this windmill technology spread back to northern Europe. Windmills built by the Dutch were used primarily to pump water.

Windmills were definitely not the first structures to harness the wind. This award belongs to the sailboat. More than likely, based on a small scale (small canoe with an animal skin as a sail) the sailboat became the only way to cross large areas of water. The sailboat evolved into large ships moving at a great distance using only the wind as a power source.

Windmills on a smaller scale, came to America in the mid-19. The Aermotor and Dempster design were invented and many are still in use. From 1850 to 1970 more than 6,000,000 windmills were installed in the United States. The main application was pumping water for livestock and providing farm homes with a water supply.

In the late 19th century, the first windmill to generate electricity was born! This was the windmill Brush in Cleveland, Ohio, and the year 1888 was! The rotor was approximately 17 meters in diameter. This windmill had a gearbox with high spin ratio attached to a DC generator.

By mid 1920, several small scale systems were found across the Midwestern plains and used to supply farms with electricity. These systems generally a power of 1.3 kilowatts.

1941 saw the largest wind generator to date. This generating capacity of 1.25 megawatts. Was known as the Smith-Putnam machine. The rotor measured an astonishing 175 feet in diameter.

Today, many wind turbines are in operation from small scale residential systems that are accessible to the home of wind farms on a large scale turbines that are used to provide a large amount of electricity to utility customers.