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Historically, wind power was used by sails, windmills and windpumps, but today it is mostly used to generate electricity. This article deals only with wind power for electricity generation. Today, wind power is generated almost completely with wind turbines, generally grouped into wind farms and connected to the electrical grid.
The use of wind to provide mechanical power came somewhat later in antiquity. The Babylonian emperor Hammurabi planned to use wind power for his ambitious irrigation project in the 17th century BC. [16] Hero of Alexandria (Heron) in first-century Roman Egypt described what appears to be a wind-driven wheel to power a machine.
The first municipal use of multiple wind-electric turbines in the USA may have been a five turbine system in Pettibone, North Dakota in 1940. These were commercial Wincharger units on guyed towers. [16] In 1980, the world's first wind farm, consisting of twenty 30 kW wind turbines was installed at Crotched Mountain, in New Hampshire. [17]
A new trend for 2024 was diversification of these purchases to include not just wind and solar but also nuclear. Electric vehicle sales reached 1.5 million in 2024 , growing by 6.5%.
The windmills at Kinderdijk in the village of Kinderdijk, Netherlands is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A windmill is a structure that converts wind power into rotational energy using vanes called sails or blades, by tradition specifically to mill grain (), but in some parts of the English-speaking world, the term has also been extended to encompass windpumps, wind turbines, and other applications.
Some wind and solar farms are benefiting from sky-high electricity prices, which are driven by the record price of gas. Because much of the UK’s electricity comes from gas-burning power plants ...
By the 1930s, use of wind turbines in rural areas was declining as the distribution system extended to those areas. [16] A forerunner of modern horizontal-axis wind generators was in service at Yalta, USSR, in 1931. This was a 100 kW generator on a 30-meter (98 ft) tower, connected to the local 6.3 kV distribution system.
Humans have harnessed wind energy since at least 3500 BC. Until the 20th century, it was primarily used to power ships, windmills and water pumps. Today, the vast majority of wind power is used to generate electricity using wind turbines. [12] Modern utility-scale wind turbines range from around 600 kW to 9 MW of rated power.