The evolution of the wind turbine

TL;DR

• Wind power has been leveraged by humans since 5,000 BC and is an important part of the renewable energy transition today.  

• The wind turbine was first developed in the 1880s with projects in the US, Scotland, and Denmark all playing a role in making this sustainable technology functional.  

• The commercialisation of wind power ramped up in the 1970s, with a US energy crisis driving growth in this area as governments rushed to find replacement sources of energy.  

• In recent years, China has come to dominate the industry. The country now accounts for 49% of the world’s wind generation and holds the record for the most wind power generated in one day.  

• To ensure the future of wind energy, turbines need to be made larger, more efficient, accessible to the developing world, and adapted for floating offshore installations.

The detail

As the energy transition gathers pace and renewables are more widely adopted as part of the world’s push to achieve net zero by 2050, wind power has substantially increased its share of the energy mix. Second only to solar, on and offshore wind farm capacity rose by 50% from 2022 to 2023. The world’s cumulative wind power now totals 1,021 GW, and it is projected to continue growing rapidly in the coming years. 

Both commercial and domestic modern-day turbines consist of a shift and set of blades accompanied by a box known as the nacelle. As the wind causes the blades to spin, kinetic energy makes the shaft in the nacelle turn and a generator set within the nacelle then converts this into electrical energy. 

With this relatively simple mechanism at its core, wind power has proven itself to be a mature technology with an extensive global supply chain. But how did we get to this point?  

From ancient origins to commercial powerhouses 

Civilizations have been relying on wind energy for thousands of years.  

Wind was used to send boats down the Nile as early as 5,000 BC. By 200 BC, wind-powered water pumps were being adopted in China. Heron of Alexandria is credited for inventing the windmill in the 1^st century AD when he used the wind to power an organ, and by the 11^th century, people in the Middle East were using wind pumps and mills for food production.  

However, it took another 800 years for the first commercially viable windmill to enter the market. In the 1850s, Daniel Hallady and John Burnham established the U.S. Wind Engine and Pump Company in Illinois, and in 1883, the duo patented the Halladay Windmill. This was one of the first windmills able to regulate and maintain a uniform speed by changing the pitch of its sails. Constructed by the Austrian engineer Josef Friedlander for the 1883 Vienna International Electrical Exhibition, the Halladay Windmill led to Friedlander being acknowledged as the first person to install a wind generator.  

At the same time, in Scotland, Professor James Blyth was coming up with the idea for the first renewable wind turbine. In 1887, Blyth was experimenting in his garden by creating a wind turbine that resembled a traditional windmill. It featured a 33ft high wooden stem at the centre, which anchored four canvas sails measuring 8ft long and 3ft wide.

After some trial and error, Blyth discovered he could power the lights in his home with his turbine and eventually transmitted the excess power generated into a 10ft wide flywheel with 12 of Camille Alphone Fauré’s batteries. The story goes that he offered to light the main street of his hometown Marykirk with his invention, but the villagers refused as they believed electricity to be the work of the devil.  

Just one year later, in 1888, inventor Charles Brush was hard at work on his property in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s there that he came up with the world’s first automatically operating wind turbine, which used a furling system of weights and levers. With a 56ft tower, a rotor diameter of 17 metres, and 144 blades made of cedar wood, his turbine was able to produce 12 KW of electricity – more than enough to power his mansion and the streetlights in downtown Cleveland.  

A solution to a crisis 

Momentum continued into the 1900s thanks, in large part, to Danish scientist Poul la Cour. He created an early prototype of a power station, which in turn led to the creation of over 2,000 windmills producing more than 30 MW of power. Today, Denmark is still one the world’s leaders, with wind accounting for 56% of the country’s electricity production. Innovation also continued to come out of the US in the first half of the 20^th century – in 1941, the Smith-Putnam wind turbine became the first megawatt-sized model, featuring a 120ft steel lattice tower and two blades.  

Fast-forward almost a century to the American energy crisis of the 1970s. This event triggered renewed interest in wind power. The urgent need to find alternative energy sources led to the launch of a research programme backed by NASA and, by 1978, the US Congress had passed the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act, a move which required companies to buy a certain amount of their electricity from renewable sources.  

Into the 1980s, the State of California started to offer tax rebates to fuel the growth of wind power. The year 1980 also saw the first wind farm installation by US Windpower in New Hampshire. The farm consisted of 20 wind turbines producing 30 kW each. In 1991, the world’s first offshore wind farm was constructed in Denmark with a total capacity of 5 MW. This output covered the annual consumption of 2,200 Danish households.  

A century of change 

The 21^st century has seen countries worldwide continue to innovate and invest in wind power. From 2000 to 2015, the world’s cumulative wind energy capacity grew from 17,000 MW to more than 430,000 MW. The UK’s first offshore wind farm, Blyth, opened in 2003 and in 2008, the 2,000 wind farms operating across the UK were producing enough electricity to power 1.5 million homes.  

2012 proved to be another milestone year for wind energy. This was the year that wind became the top source of new power in the US, making up approximately 42% of the country’s new power capacity. 45,000 new wind turbines were erected in the country at the same time, including the Alta Wind Energy Centre in California with 440 wind turbines and a capacity of 1,320 MW. The next year, the US’s first grid-connected offshore wind turbine was launched off the coast of Maine.  

In recent years, China has started to dominate the world’s wind power industry. In 2021, the country installed more offshore wind generation capacity than every other country in the world. Off the back of this enormous investment, it’s unsurprising to discover that in 2022 China accounted for 49% of the world’s total offshore wind capacity. In 2024, the country's wind and solar capacity is predicted to surpass coal for the first time, and it is currently building the world’s largest onshore turbines, measuring some 131 metres in length - each foil dwarfing Big Ben and the Statue of Liberty.

China also set the record for the most amount of wind energy generated in a single day on 1^st September 2023. The Goldwind GWH252-16MW, located offshore from Fujian Province, produced 284.1 MWh in just 24 hours. This is enough energy to power approximately 170,000 homes. One of the main reasons why Goldwind was able to set this new record is that it has been designed to operate in a typhoon and can adjust its blades in real-time while continually monitoring to ensure operational safety. The Goldwind rotor has a diameter of 252 metres and each blade can reach more than two thirds of the speed of sound.  

Europe and the US are also continuing to expand and evolve their wind power industries. For example, 2020 saw the UK use renewable sources to provide the majority of its electricity for the first time through a mix of wind, solar, bioenergy, and hydroelectric sources. In 2022, the UK installed almost 3 GW of offshore wind capacity, more than the rest of the world combined, excluding China.  

Looking onshore, the EU installed 79% of the total 18.3 GW of new wind power capacity in 2023 on land. Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden are all producing wind energy at scale, and it is predicted that 260 GW of new wind power capacity will be generated across the EU between 2024 and 2030. Even so, experts warn this capacity needs to ramp up quickly if the EU wants to meet its 2030 climate targets.  

In the US, the first utility-scale offshore wind farm – South Fork Wind - opened in 2024, operating off the coast of Long Island, New York. China, the US, Brazil and Germany accounted for 77% of new wind power installations in 2023, but there are also several emerging markets in the developing world that are starting to generate their own wind energy. Kenya is one example and is home to the largest wind farm in Africa, the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project. The farm has a capacity of 310 MW and accounts for around 17% of the country’s electricity output.  

What lies ahead?  

The last five years have seen intense growth for the wind power industry. Investment in wind generation increased by 20% in 2022 and capacity grew by 265 TWh (an increase of 14%).  

The focus of the coming years will be maximising the efficiency and productivity of turbines. This is especially important to ensure wind energy can be effectively generated in lower wind speeds to unlock more sites. This means introducing higher towers, longer blades and larger rotor diameters.  

Unfortunately, environmental concerns and negative public opinion means that these larger wind turbines will likely be confined to offshore farms. Investing in more floating wind farms could unlock the vast potential of the ocean and generate energy in areas where the water is too deep for fixed turbines. The developing world should also be an area of focus, which will require upfront investment and co-operation to overcome supply chain and grid challenges.  

That being said, as the history of wind turbines proves, this is a technology that inspires innovation, and with countries worldwide looking to increase their wind energy capacity as part of their net zero journeys, the next generation of wind turbines could be just around the corner.  

— Lew 👋

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