The Wind Power Story

A Century of Innovation that Reshaped the Global Energy Landscape

Brandon N. Owens

• Publisher: Wiley-IEEE Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781118794258
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Energy

Helps readers understand and appreciate what the history of wind power can teach us about technology innovation and provides the implications for both wind power today and its future

This book takes readers on a journey through the history of wind power in order to show how the technology evolved over the course of the twentieth century and where it may be headed in the twenty-first century. It introduces and examines broad themes such as government funding of wind power, the role of fossil fuels in wind power development, and the importance of entrepreneurs in wind power development. It also discusses the lessons learned from wind power technology innovation and makes them relevant to the understanding of wind power today and in the future.

Spanning the entire history of wind power (1888-2018), The Wind Power Story: A Century of Innovation that Reshaped the Global Energy Landscape provides balanced coverage of each decade as well as the important wind power technology innovations that occurred during that time. Compelling from the first page to the last, it offers chapters covering the pioneers of wind power; the age of small wind; wind power in the wake of war; wind power's use across Europe; government-funded research programs; how Denmark reinvented wind power in the 1970s; the California Wind Rush of the 1980s; wind power's rise in Spain; America's wind power starting in the 1990s; India's wind power path; the wind power surge in China; the globalization of wind power; and much more.

In addition, this text:

• Spans the entire global history of wind power, while weaving together both the historical context and the technical details of wind power innovation
• Provides historical context for wind power developments and explains the evolution of wind turbine technology in an easy-to-understand manner
• Discusses the policy, technology, and market evolution of wind power in commonly understood language
• Offers a review of the surrounding power technology, policy, and market environment throughout the history of wind power

A book that both specialists and non-specialists can read in order to understand and appreciate the past, present, and future of wind power technology, The Wind Power Story: A Century of Innovation that Reshaped the Global Energy Landscape will be of great interest to any engineer and any interested readers looking to understand wind power technologies, markets, and policies in one book.

1
The Wind Power Pioneers

When we see a new form or structure with new qualities, we are really seeing new arrangements of what already existed.

—David Christian (2018)

1.1 Work of the Devil

In 1887, eleven years after Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell called “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” into his newly invented telephone, another Scot developed a new way to generate electricity—the wind turbine. James Blyth—a professor at Anderson's College in Glasgow—combined a traditional vertical‐axis windmill with an electric generator.^a

Of course, windmills themselves were centuries old in 1887. But up until this time, they were used primarily to pump water, or as a mechanical power source in brickyards, spinning mills, and wood workshops.^b So until Blyth did it, no one had coupled the centuries‐old windmill with the new nineteenth century electric generator—or “dynamo”—as it was called at the time. The first rudimentary dynamo is credited to Frenchman Hippolyte Pixii in 1832. Antonio Pacinotti enabled it to provide continuous direct current (DC) power by 1860; and in 1867, Werner von Siemens, Charles Wheatstone, and S.A. Varley nearly simultaneously devised the “self‐exciting dynamo‐electric generator.”¹ Blyth's contribution was to combine the electric generator and the windmill. He fused two technologies from two different eras to create something new.^c

This was the beginning of a century long journey that would eventually lead to the development of the modern horizontal‐axis wind turbine, the most common commercially available wind turbine today. In the twenty‐first century, wind power is a big deal. Wind turbines are now generating electricity in ninety countries around the world and the total installed base is nearly 600 GW.² That is a lot of electricity. In fact, total global installed wind capacity today is enough to meet the electricity needs of every household in the US.^d Furthermore, investment in wind, solar, and other renewable resources reached US$300 billion in 2018. It was the largest source of global electricity spending.³ Together with solar power, wind energy investments account for two‐thirds of all global power plant additions. Wind power is not just a passing fad either. Looking ahead, the International Energy Agency (IEA)—which keeps track of these things—expects the world to add another 300 GW of wind turbines by 2022.⁴

Wind power is such an important part of the global energy landscape today in the twenty‐first century that we almost take it for granted. It wasn't always so. Wind power had very humble beginnings, starting with Mr. Blyth's fusion of a vertical‐axis windmill and the electric dynamo in 1887. Born in 1839 in the village of Marykirk, James Blyth displayed a proclivity toward science from an early age. He was educated at the local parish school before winning a scholarship to the General Assembly Normal School in Edinburgh. After receiving a BA from the University of Edinburgh, he taught mathematics for a while before earning an MA and being appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy at Anderson's College in 1880, which is now the University of Strathclyde. It is here that he began his research into wind power.⁵

After putting his wind turbine in operation in July 1887, Blyth delivered a paper to the Philosophical Society of Glasgow the following May. In the paper, Blyth described his wind turbine as being “of a tripod design, with a 33‐feet windshaft, four arms of 13 feet with canvas sails, and a Burgin dynamo driven from the flywheel using a rope.”⁶ Blyth used the electrical output from the generator to charge lead‐acid batteries that powered the lights in his holiday home in Marykirk. Once it was up and running, he soon realized that his wind turbine provided more electricity than his cottage lights needed, so he offered to light up the local main street. Apparently, not knowing what to make of his offer—and wind power in general—the townspeople labeled it “the work of the devil.”⁷ Blyth, it seems, would be the first in a long list of distinguished wind power innovators that were a step ahead of their contemporaries.

Blyth was awarded a patent in the United Kingdom for his “wind engine” in 1891.⁸ Four years later, he licensed the Glasgow engineering company—Mavor and Coulson—to build a second, improved wind turbine. The improved wind turbine was eventually used to supply emergency power to the Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary and Dispensary of Montrose, which is known today as Sunnyside Royal Hospital.⁹ Blyth's promising research came to an end with his death in 1906. Scotland thus relinquished its first—and only—lead in wind power technology.

As it turns out, Professor Blyth was not the only innovator tinkering with wind power at the end of the nineteenth century. During the same winter, another inventor was busy building a wind turbine prototype. To provide power to his mansion and basement laboratory, Mr. Charles F. Brush built a wind turbine in his backyard in Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Brush's wind turbine began generating electricity just a few months after Blyth's started.

At the time, Brush was one of America's most distinguished inventors. He received his mining engineering degree from the University of Michigan in 1869. He worked four years in Cleveland as a chemist before forming an iron dealing partnership. In 1876, Brush received one of his fifty career patents for the open coil‐type dynamo and subsequently began selling them commercially. His next invention—an improvement to the arc light—made Brush world famous. Arc lights preceded Edison's incandescent light bulb in commercial use and they were suited to applications where very bright light was needed, such as street lights and lighting in commercial and public buildings.

Brush's experience as an electric industry pioneer put him in a unique position to invent a new electricity generation technology like wind power. He had already improved both the arc light and the electric generator. In fact, for a time, his improved generator was the largest in the world. Cities across the country began using Mr. Brush's arc light. In Wabash, Indiana, the city fathers hired Brush to set up four 3,000‐arc light displays at the local courthouse. By 1881, Brush's invention was lighting the streets of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and San Francisco.¹⁰

In 1880, Mr. Brush formed the Brush Electric Company, which was later bought by Thomson‐Houston Electric Company in 1889 and eventually merged with the Edison General Electric Company in 1891 to help form General Electric (GE).¹¹ After the success of the Brush Electric Company, Brush was financially secure enough to focus on his personal interests, which apparently included creating the first wind turbine in North America in the backyard of his mansion on Euclid Avenue—or “Millionaire's Row”—in Cleveland.

Electricity from Brush's wind turbine was used to charge twelve batteries, which were the power source for 350 incandescent lamps, two arc lamps, and three motors.¹² Like Blyth, Brush had combined a traditional windmill with a DC generator. Brush used the more common horizontal‐axis windmill, a machine with its main shaft positioned horizontally—or parallel—to the ground, as opposed to Blyth's vertical‐axis windmill, which had its main shaft oriented vertically—or perpendicular—to the ground. Although ver...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 The Wind Power Pioneers
• 2 The Age of Small Wind
• 3 The Birth of Big Wind
• 4 Wind Power's Giant Leap
• 5 Wind Power in the Wake of War
• 6 Wind Power's Invisible Solution
• 7 The French Connection
• 8 Germany's Timeless Beauty
• 9 Wind Power’s Silent Decade
• 10 America's Next Moonshot
• 11 Denmark Reinvents Wind Power
• 12 The Wind King
• 13 The California Wind Rush
• 14 Germany's Giant
• 15 Spain's Wind Power Miracle
• 16 Europe Sails Ahead
• 17 Reigniting American Wind Power
• 18 India's Wind Power Path
• 19 China's Wind Power Surge
• 20 The Globalization of Wind Power
• Index
• End User License Agreement