How did wind energy harvesting begin?
Since early recorded history, people have been harnessing the energy of the wind, but the first practical windmills, used for grain grinding and water pumping, were built in Persia in the Middle East about 500-900 A.D. The same kind of horizontal-axis windmills appeared in Western Europe in the present Netherlands in the 11th century. The Dutch refined the windmill into a tower design and adapted it for draining lakes and marshes in the Rhine River Delta. This technology was the forerunner for windmills used in the late 19th century, when people began using windmills to pump water for farms, and later, to generate electricity for homes and industry. The first known electricity generating windmill was a battery charging machine installed in 1887 in Scotland. The next year the first windmill for electricity production was built in the United States.
Wind energy harvesting post industrialization
Industrialization led to a gradual decline in the use of windmills and the European water-pumping windmills were replaced by the steam engine. However, industrialization also stimulated the development of larger windmills to generate electricity. The commonly called wind turbines appeared in Denmark already in 1890.
The interest in using wind energy decreased with the sinking price of oil after the Second World War, but increased very rapidly again when the oil crisis started in the 1970s. After that, new ways of converting wind energy into useful power were introduced. Many of these technologies have been demonstrated today in wind farms or wind parks — groups of turbines that feed electricity into the utility grid.
Wind Energy Today
Wind energy is still a relatively young but has become the world’s fastest growing renewable energy source. Over the past two decades, the wind industry has become global. The installed wind power capacity of the world reached 196 630 MW in 2010 and is expected to reach 240 000 MW in 2011.
A wind turbine’s planned life cycle is from 20 to 30 years, after which it is possible to replace it with another turbine. The turbine can also be changed to a more effective one, if the bearing capacity of the tower and foundation allows it, or the tower and foundation can also be renewed. In Denmark, several wind turbines built in the 1980’s and 1990’s have been replaced by new turbines.
Today, the most cost-effective wind turbine size is 1-3 MW depending on the location, but already some turbines with a rating of 5 MW or more are commercialized.
Wind power has achieved a remarkable position in the energy production in several countries of the world. Today, with knowledge and data of operating wind power plants, along with continuing R&D, wind-generated electricity is comparable in cost to power from conventional utility generation in some locations. Each country has its own policies about how renewable energies and especially wind energy is supported, and the number of governments supporting wind power is growing fast. Investment in wind power plants is promoted for example by feed-in tariffs, ‘green’ certificates, flexible permit processes and good electrical network connections. The biggest countries in terms of total installed wind power capacity in 2010 were China, the USA and Germany.
Huge growth of wind power in the future
In 2010 wind power provided 2,5 percent of the total electricity consumed in the world, but the growth is predicted to be tremendous in the next decade; the harnessed wind capacity will double every three years. According to EWEA, 14 % of the electricity in Europe in 2020 will be based on wind energy. This would help meeting the renewable energy targets – “20% by 2020” - set by EU for its member states.
In the future, wind turbine sizes, especially in offshore applications, will grow in such a way that a single turbine may produce over 5 MW. Land-based wind turbines will continue to grow in size, too.
In 2009 it was forecasted that wind power can meet 8,4 % of the world’s consumption of electricity by 2019, ten years away.
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