Wind power development: A historical review
Full details
| Authors & editors | Möllerström, Erik [Author] |
| Publisher | OnlineFirst |
| Year of publication | 2024 July 23 |
| Languages | English (main text) |
| Medium | Digital |
| Edition | 1 |
| Topics | Energy & power > Wind power |
| Tags | |
| Scope & content | Abstract Wind power only received occasional attention since the introduction of electricity until the 1970s, when a revived interest in alternative energy sources spurred the development thread that led to today’s wind turbines. Although attention and financial support at the time were directed toward government-funded MW-scale wind turbines, the small models developed in the late 1970s for the Danish market were ultimately the way forward. The wind industry has since matured, as evidenced by the lower specific power and higher capacity factors of recent turbine models and the similarity between their power curve shapes. Moreover, this study highlights two historical accomplishments by Europeans that are sometimes incorrectly credited to Americans: the first wind turbine to generate electricity was built in 1883 by Austrian Josef Friedländer and the Danish Agricco (1919) became the first public grid-connected wind turbine. This work aims to comprehensively describe the main development threads of wind turbines while focusing on the thread that produced today’s large, commercially viable wind turbines. Furthermore, in this work, a novel approach regarding the historical connection between the capacity factor and the specific power is used to analyze and illustrate the development of maturity of the wind power industry. It also aims to call attention to some historical misstatements regarding wind turbine developments and suggest further reading on the various wind turbines covered in the paper. |
| Web URL | https://doi.org/10.1177/0309524X241260061 |