Wind Energy
Casey Cooper
ENG 025
12-9-12

Table of Contents

History of Wind Mills……………………………………………………………………………
Wind Turbines of Today…………………………………………………………………………
Current Technologies…………………………………………………………………………….
Pros & Cons……………………………………………………………………………………… Key Locations…………………………………………………………………………………. Constructing a Turbine……………………………………………………………………….... Turbine Components…………………………………………………………………………...
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………. Literature Cited……………………………………………………………………………..…. In today’s society many people don’t think about where the energy that produces all of their home items comes from. It’s just so easy to flip on a light switch and not care. If only they knew of a very popular way to save energy, such as Wind energy.
A brief history of the wind turbine: No one can pinpoint for certain where the first windmill originated from. Its is theorized that small scale wind turbines propelled boats up and down the Nile river as early as 5000 BC. In 2000 BC china was using crude wind turbine to pump water in rural areas. however the oldest known windmills that were actually uncovered where the merry-go-round styled windmills with woven reed sails, which ancient Persia used to grind grain. By the eleventh century the Middle East had improved its turbine technology and the bulk of its food production was powered solely by these turbines. The Ancient artifacts found in this geographic location are termed as the merry-go-round style windmill due to the fact that the turn wheel lays horizontal on the grand with the sails around the sides causing it to spin in a fashion similar to that of a merry-go-round. Historians have several differing theories on the spread of this ancient technology. One such theory states that Alexander the Great gathered new ideas from neighboring civilizations as he marched across ancient Persia and into Europe. Another theory speculated that merchants or crusaders brought these ideas home to Europe and the Dutch took these designs and refined them for the geographical location, then used the technology as a power source to help drain off the marshes near the Rhine river delta (Torrey, 1996). The styles of windmills slowly evolved to match the climate that they were needed to endure. In Europe mill workers found that they could work more efficiently with a post style windmill. This type of windmill was often fixed to a building with vertical sails, but it only faced one direction and workers were at the mercy of the wind most of the time. Following the post style windmill came the smock styled windmill. With the same vertical sails attached to the building as the post windmill had, the smock offered one ingenious improvement which was a rotating top to reposition the sails in the direction of the strongest wind. The famous pinwheel style windmill that so many of us are accustomed to seeing was actually invented in the U. S. in the 1860’s. It was modeled after the European smock style windmills, and came into use by the railroads for filling water tanks, and also by rich land owners who wanted running water pumped to their property (Torrey, 1996). With the industrialization of Europe and the US, the popularity of the wind mills faltered but still survived. It may have actually sparked the development of larger turbines that were able to put out more electricity. In 1940 the largest wind turbine of the time was constructed in Vermont. This turbine fed utilities to the local communities during WWII. People’s interest in wind turbines remained fickle commonly fluctuating with the price of fossil fuels. When the price of fuel drop drastically after WWII so did the public interest in wind turbines.
In the 1920’s a man by the name of Marcellus Jacobs began experimenting with the windmill technology. He discovered that if he decreased the number of blades to a mere three, it drastically increased the amount of energy that the windmill put out by at least 3 times,