Wind History

The first machines that took advantage of the wind were probably of vertical axis windmills used to grind grain in Persia (now Iran) around the 200BC. They had a number of arms which mounted sails, which were originally made of reeds. The horizontal axis windmills appeared in the Mediterranean region around the 10th century and were stationed permanently in the face of the maritime winds that dominant. The first European windmills appeared in the tenth century third, and possessed a manual mechanism that rotated around the Windmill to guide it to the wind. These mills were used to grind grain and pump water. The Dutch windmill in the 15th century had a fixed body and a rotating sleeve with a weathervane aiming palettes to the wind. These machines had palettes with diameters of up to 25 m and output power of up to 30 kW with favorable winds. Modern generators had in general, about one quarter of the effectiveness of the wind turbine. These machines came to expand much until end of the nineteenth century when, for example, Holland was nearly 9000 windmills. Less than 1000 of these machines still continue to function. Take advantage of the wind to generate large-scale electrical energy is a relatively recent development. The wind has been used for hundreds of years for navigation and to power windmills, but it was not until the end of the 19th century built the first wind turbine for electricity production. This windmill was built by Charles Brush (inventor of the key technologies emerging electrical industry at the time), this mill had 17 metres tall and a rotor of 144 palettes, completely built of cedar wood. Shortly thereafter, the Dane Poul la Cour, discovered that the wind turbines that they rotated rapidly and have rotors with few palettes generated electricity more efficiently than wind turbines of slow movement with rotors for many palettes. This opened the door in a number of wind turbine advances during the 20th century. These developments include the introduction of the generators of alternating current, the standardization of the model with rotor to Windward (the rotor facing the wind), guidance teams electro-mechanic to make sure that the rotor always this directly against the wind, and control systems to prevent the rotor is back too fast from strong winds. Modern wind turbines make use of very few palettes but very long to capture energy from the wind. As these are large machines, its rotation is relatively slow, but they generate large amounts of energy to do so.

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