The development of wind turbines for electricity generation:
Above - A technician servicing one of the wind turbines in Esperance, Western Australia.
 Google Earth - Esperance
It is believed that the concept of “wind-powered electricity” originated in Denmark during the late nineteenth century. (From this point onwards, it is accurate to use the term “wind turbine” rather than windmill.) A royal commission was set up in Denmark in 1890 with the object of developing medium-sized wind turbines to meet the special pumping and electrical needs of the expanding dairy industry. The resulting distinctive machines had four sails, showing evidence of their descent from traditional windmills. As early as 1910, wind-turbine generators produced usable amounts of electricity in Denmark. Several hundred machines were produced before 1914.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, wind power development became part of an intensive Soviet program to modernise a basically peasant agriculture and to industrialise generally. Between 1935 and 1955, the former Soviet Union built some 30 prototype wind turbines, rated up to 30 kilowatts (kW).
America’s first large experimental wind turbine was the “Smith-Putnam”, which was named after its builder and designer. This machine was built in 1941 in Vermont USA and provided electricity to the supply network of a New England power company during a three-and-a-half year test period. The “Smith-Putnam” operated intermittently for 1,100 hours until a rotor failure (“rotor” is the modern name for the wind turbine blades previously called a wind wheel or a sail wheel.) The New England power company decided to use other low-cost generating plant and did not repair the wind turbine.
Above - The familiar conventional old style windmills were primarily used to pump underground water to the surface.
During the same period, many isolated rural areas in Australia used small wind turbines to produce direct current, or DC electricity. This is electrical current that flows in one direction. Electricity was generally used to charge batteries, which in turn provided a regular 32 volt DC electricity supply for lighting and for small appliances. At this time, many Australian utilities had not yet extended their supply networks to remote areas. Instead, farmers and other people living in the outback depended on electricity generators and water pumps, driven by the wind. The early wind turbines were made of metal and they had many blades. Thanks to the aviation technology of World War I, the design of wind turbines improved and they featured two or three thin blades, which operated at higher speeds.
In 1945 most wind-driven electricity generators were only up to 5kW although some larger machines were constructed for special purposes. When more Australian power companies extended their main networks to rural areas, there was a reduction in the use of small wind turbines. However, rural wind turbines were still extremely useful when main electricity supplies were not available or too costly for remote customers.
Wind-driven water pumps also operated at many farming properties. After World War II, there was an upsurge in interest in generating electricity by means of wind turbines. This arose because of the difficulties in obtaining fossil fuel supplies (coal, oil and gas) for conventional generating methods. Many national governments, particularly in Europe, became more interested in developing alternative energy sources, including wind power. Studies were initiated in the UK, Germany, Denmark and France, resulting in the construction of a range of wind-turbine generators with a possible output of up to 1 megawatt (MW).
 Next Section >> Recent developments.
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