“The infant industry argument is a smoke screen. The so-called infants never grow up.” (Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose, 1979, p. 49)
The idea of a transition to a “new energy future” is historically incorrect with wind power, grid solar, and battery-driven cars and trucks. All have a history of non-competitiveness with or displacement by fossil fuels. Energy density explains much of why the renewable energy era gave way to a far better world of coal, oil, and natural gas in recent centuries.
This is taken from a 2014 article by Zachary Shahan for Renewable Energy World, History of Wind Turbines.
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1887: The first known wind turbine used to produce electricity is built in Scotland. The wind turbine is created by Prof James Blyth of Anderson’s College, Glasgow (now known as Strathclyde University). “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, 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 Marykirk for lighting the main street, however, they turned down the offer as they thought electricity was ‘the work of the devil.’ “
1888: The first known US wind turbine created for electricity production is built by inventor Charles Brush to provide electricity for his mansion in Ohio. (Pictured above.)
1891: A Danish scientist, Poul la Cour, develops an electricity-generating wind turbine and later figures out how to supply a steady stream of power from the wind turbine by use of a regulator, a Kratostate.
1895: Poul la Cour converts his windmill into a prototype electrical power plant. It is then used to provide electricity for lighting for the village of Askov.
1903: Poul la Cour starts the Society of Wind Electricians. He is also the first known person to discover that wind turbines with fewer blades that spin faster are more efficient than turbines with many blades spinning slowly.
1904: The Society of Wind Electricians holds its first course on wind electricity. (Class participants pictured above.)
By 1908: 72 electricity-generating wind power systems are running across Denmark. The windmills range from 5 kW to 25 kW in size.
1927: Joe Jacobs and Marcellus Jacobs open a “Jacobs Wind” factory in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They produce wind turbines for use on farms, since farms often don’t have access to the grid. The wind turbines are generally used to charge batteries and to power lights. By 1957, Jacobs Wind has now produced and sold approximately 30,000 wind turbines, including to customers in Africa and Antarctica.
1931: A vertical-axis wind turbine design called the Darrieus wind turbine is patented by Georges Jean Marie Darrieus, a French aeronautical engineer. This type of wind turbine is still used today, but for more niche applications like on boats, not nearly as widely as horizontal-axis wind turbines.
1931: A horizontal-axis wind turbine similar to the ones we use today is built in Yalta. The wind turbine has 100 kW of capacity, a 32-meter-high tower, and a 32% load factor (which is actually similar to what today’s wind turbines get).
1941: The first megawatt-size wind turbine is connected to a local electrical distribution grid. The 1.25-MW Smith-Putnam wind turbine is erected in Castletown, Vermont. It has blades 75 feet in length.
1957: Johannes Juul, a former student of Poul la Cour, builds a horizontal-axis wind turbine with a diameter of 24 meters and 3 blades very similar in design to wind turbines still used today. The wind turbine has a capacity of 200 kW and it employs a new invention, emergency aerodynamic tip breaks, which is still used in wind turbines today. #rewpage#
1975: The first US wind farm is put online, producing enough power for up to 4,149 homes. In the same year, NASA begins a program to develop utility-scale wind turbines starts.
1978: The world’s first multi-megawatt wind turbine is produced by Tvind school teachers and students. The 2-megawatt wind turbine “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.” (This wind turbine is still running today.)
1978: Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas produces its first wind turbine.
1978: The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA P.L. 95-617) requires that utilities interconnect renewable energy projects to the grid at an “avoided cost” purchase price.
1980: Wind developer Zond is founded (bought by Enron in 1997, Enron Wind is sold to GE in 2002 to become GE Wind Energy.
1980: Wind turbine manufacturer Danregn Vindkraft is founded, spinning off from a Danish manufacturer of irrigation systems. It later becomes Bonus Energy and then Siemens Wind Power.
1980: The world’s first wind farm (20 turbines) is put online
1980s: Denmark starts siting offshore wind turbines.
1980s: Enertech begins building 1.8 kW wind turbines that can connect to the grid. Commercial wind turbine rotors get up to a diameter of 17 meters and a capacity of 75 kilowatts.
1981: A second wind farm goes up in the US., with total US installed wind power capacity reaching approximately 10 megawatts.
1981: California implements tax credits for wind turbines, which expire 1986.
1984: Fifteen wind farms are online in the US, almost double the year before, producing enough power for up to 146,000 homes.
1986: Vestas, which had previously focused on other types of machines (dating back to 1898), decides to focus 100% on the wind turbine market. It forms Vestas Wind Systems A/S and sells off its other business arms. Vestas would sell its 1,000th wind turbine in 1991 and does public in 1998.
1987: A 3.2-megawatt wind turbine is developed by the NASA wind turbine program.
1990: The Solar, Wind, Waste, and Geothermal Power Production Incentives Act of 1990 is enacted to amend PURPA and remove size limitations on renewable energy power plants qualifying for PURPA benefits.
1990: 46 wind farms are online in the US, providing enough power for up to nearly 300,000 homes.
1991: The first offshore wind farm in the world is constructed in southern Denmark. It includes 11 wind turbines manufactured by Bonus Energy, each with a capacity of 450 kW.
1991: The UK’s first onshore wind farm is constructed in Cornwall. The wind farm includes 10 wind farms that together produce enough electricity for approximately 2,700 homes. #rewpage#
1992: The United States implements the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind power. The PTC incentives electricity production rather than simply incentivizing installation (which resulted in problems with performance and reliability). In the initial years, wind power producers get paid 1.5¢ per kWh for electricity they produce for the first 10 years of operation.
1995: Vestas produces its first offshore wind turbine.
2000: Global wind power capacity reaches 17,400 megawatts.