A Brief History Of Energy – Wind Power

The earliest instances of the wind being used by humans’ dates back thousands of years.

The ancient Egyptians used it to sail their boats up and down the river Nile, the Babylonians used it to power irrigation systems and the Persians used it for windmills to grind grain. In China, windmills made of woven-reed blades were used to pump water.

The first recorded wind powered machine however was designed and constructed by the mathematician Heron of Alexandria.

His wind wheel machine was the first instance of the wind being used to power a mechanical machine. The wind wheel powered a piston that forced air through organ pipes to create sounds like that of a flute.

Wind power was most widely used across the east and it was little utilised in the west until the Crusades in the late 11th century AD.

As western knights and warriors travelled east through the Byzantine Empire and the Levant, they encountered the peoples of the Middle East.

The first proper windmills had been in use in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran for centuries and the technology was adopted by the Arabs.

It is thought that knowledge of these wind powered devices was brought back to Western Europe from returning pilgrims and crusaders, as in the 1180s windmills began to be used to grind flour for the first time.

The earliest European reference of a windmill is from 1185 in Yorkshire. Due to their usefulness and ability to be used even during the freezing winter (unlike water mills), wind power was an important resource.

In Holland, windmills were used to drain the Rhine River delta during the 14th century.

Harnessing the wind more effectively revolutionised the world during the Age of Discovery. Led by the Portuguese, these new ships were able to better manoeuvre and take advantage of the wind, allowing them to sail across the oceans for the first time.

Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas, Magellan and Juan Sebastian Elcano circumnavigated the globe for the first time.

From the 15th to the 17th centuries the world was explored by pioneering sailors and mapped accurately, paving the way for global trade and the empires that would rise in later years. It was during this period that the first colonists to the ‘New World’ began to settle. They brought wind power and technology with them and by the 1800s there were thousands of windmills and wind pumps across the Americas.

The first ‘proper’ wind turbine as in a windmill designed to generate electricity, was built in Scotland in 1887 by Professor James Blyth to power the lighting in his holiday cottage.

Blyth offered the surplus electricity to the nearby village of Marykirk but was turned down as the villagers thought that electricity was ‘the work of the devil’.

In the USA, Charles F Brush’s Brush Electric Company built the world’s first automatically operated wind turbine generator to power his mansion. The wind turbine meant that it was the first house in Cleveland to have electricity. The turbine continuously provided power to the property for over 20 years.

Wind turbines were also used on ships during the late 19th century and were utilised by German U-boats to save power during World War Two.

Throughout the 20th and early 21st century most electricity was generated via the use of at the time abundant and cheap fossil fuels.

However, as the years progressed concerns over the damage being done to the environment and greater understanding of how the planet’s climate was being impacted by pollution the focus turned to renewable sources of energy generation.

In the 1970s, development of more powerful wind turbines stepped up a notch.

In the USA, NASA was tasked with designing turbines. It was in Europe, however, that the biggest breakthroughs emerged.

The first megawatt wind turbine was constructed in Denmark and it pioneered many of the technologies used today. The most important innovation was the shape of the blades that were made with the help of German aeronautics specialists.

In 2009 the first offshore wind turbines were built in the North Sea by Norway and following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan plans to build a large offshore wind farm to provide the region power rather than relying on nuclear means.

In December 2019, wind power in the UK produced 16 GW of electricity for the first time, breaking all previous records and since then continued to hit new highs.

With government attention turning to reducing the amount of carbon being produced wind power is set to be a key player in reaching the net zero goal.

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