Energy Atlas

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Wind Power

Also Known As Wind Energy
Renewable

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Turbine Blades

Energy captured from moving air, milled for grain and pumped for water over many centuries and turned to electricity from the late 1880s. Modern three-blade turbines, on land and increasingly offshore, made wind one of the two fastest-growing electricity sources of the early twenty-first century alongside solar power.

Facts
Source Class
Renewable 1
First Commercial Year
1888 2
Charles Brush built a wind turbine generating electricity for his Cleveland home in 1888; James Blyth in Scotland lit his cottage by wind in 1887. Neither was commercial in the modern sense; grid-scale wind farms date from the early 1980s in California and Denmark.
Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Used By

Sources
1. United States Energy Information Administration Official Site
US Energy Information AdministrationView the Source
2. Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.View the Source
National Renewable Energy Laboratory Official Site
National Renewable Energy LaboratoryAssociated With: National Renewable Energy LaboratoryView the Source
University of Strathclyde Science on the Streets
University of StrathclydeAssociated With: First Wind-Generated Electricity, Science on the Streets, James Blyth
Quote, Associated With: First Wind-Generated Electricity, Science on the Streets, James Blyth
installation of a cloth-sailed, horizontal wind turbine...at his Marykirk holiday cottage in July 1887
View the Source
Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationUsed By: Jiuquan Wind Power Base, Gansu Wind Farm, infobox
Quote, Used By: Jiuquan Wind Power Base, Gansu Wind Farm, infobox
10.45 GW
View the Source
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