Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Who developed the first wind turbine to create electricity?
Across the Atlantic, in Cleveland, Ohio a larger and heavily engineered machine was designed and constructed in the winter of 1887–1888 by Charles F. Brush,[20] this was built by his engineering company at his home and operated from 1886 until 1900.[21] The Brush wind turbine had a rotor 17 m (56 foot) in diameter and was mounted on an 18 m (60 foot) tower. Although large by today's standards, the machine was only rated at 12kW; it turned relatively slowly since it had 144 blades. The connected dynamo was used either to charge a bank of batteries or to operate up to 100 incandescent light bulbs, three arc lamps, and various motors in Brush's laboratory. The machine fell into disuse after 1900 when electricity became available from Cleveland's central stations, and was abandoned in 1908.[22]
The two towers are linked via three skybridges, each holding a 225 kW wind turbine, totalling to 675 kW of wind power capacity. Each of these turbines measure in diameter, and is aligned north, which is the direction from which air from the Persian Gulf blows in. The sail-shaped buildings on either side are designed to funnel wind through the gap to provide accelerated wind passing through the turbines. This was confirmed by wind tunnel tests, which showed that the buildings create an S-shaped flow, ensuring that any wind coming within a 45° angle to either side of the central axis will create a wind stream that remains perpendicular to the turbines. This significantly increases their potential to generate electricity.
In 2005, Orion Energy announced plans to develop a 450-megawatt wind farm with 225 turbines at Biglow Canyon in the Columbia River Gorge, at the time the largest project of its kind in Oregon. Portland General Electric (PGE) acquired Orion's development right to the $200 million project in 2006. In November 2006, PGE purchased the first 76 turbines for the project from Vestas, with the project cost increasing to an estimated $256 million for the first phase. PGE broke ground on the site in February 2007. In the middle of October 2007, ten Vestas V82 wind turbines were energized to produce the first electricity at Biglow. The last of the 76 turbines in the first-phase of the wind farm development became operational in December 2007.
Wind power harnesses the power of the wind to propel the blades of wind turbines. These turbines cause the rotation of magnets, which creates electricity. Wind towers are usually built together on wind farms. There are offshore and onshore wind farms. Global wind power capacity has expanded rapidly to 336 GW in June 2014, and wind energy production was around 4% of total worldwide electricity usage, and growing rapidly.
Cielo Wind Power has capitalized $1.4 billion and has installed 1,068 wind turbines on over with its first ten projects from 1998 to 2008. Cielo Wind Power has developed and installed 1,149 MW of wind-generated electricity throughout the Southwest. Two out of every three wind turbines installed in Texas from 1994 through 2004 were developed by Cielo.
Wind turbines are devices that convert the wind's kinetic energy into electrical power. The result of over a millennium of windmill development and modern engineering, today's wind turbines are manufactured in a wide range of horizontal axis and vertical axis types. The smallest turbines are used for applications such as battery charging for auxiliary power. Slightly larger turbines can be used for making small contributions to a domestic power supply while selling unused power back to the utility supplier via the electrical grid. Arrays of large turbines, known as wind farms, have become an increasingly important source of renewable energy and are used in many countries as part of a strategy to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.
Windmills- Also known as a wind turbine, windmills are increasing in popularity for their ability to efficiently use the wind to generate electricity. Although they come in many shapes and sizes, the most common one is the large three-blade. The blades work on the same principle as an airplane wing. As wind passes over the blades, it creates an area of low and high pressure, causing the blade to move, spinning a shaft and creating electricity. It is most like a steam turbine, but work with an infinite supply of wind.
NREL has also recently signed agreements with Siemens Power Generation and First Wind, a wind power developer. Siemens is launching a new research and development facility in nearby Boulder, Colorado, and has agreed to locate and test a commercial-scale wind turbine at NREL's National Wind Technology Center (NWTC). First Wind (formerly called UPC Wind Partners, LLC) owns and operates the 30-megawatt Kaheawa Wind Power farm in West Maui, Hawaii, and has agreed to let the NWTC establish a Remote Research Affiliate Partner Site at the facility. The Maui satellite of NWTC will collaborate with First Wind on studies to develop advanced wind energy technologies, including energy storage and integration of renewable electric power into Maui's electrical grid.[75]
Doubly fed electrical generators are similar to AC electrical generators, but have additional features which allow them to run at speeds slightly above or below their natural synchronous speed. This is useful for large variable speed wind turbines, because wind speed can change suddenly. When a gust of wind hits a wind turbine, the blades try to speed up, but a synchronous generator is locked to the speed of the power grid and cannot speed up. So large forces are developed in the hub, gearbox, and generator as the power grid pushes back. This causes wear and damage to the mechanism. If the turbine is allowed to speed up immediately when hit by a wind gust, the stresses are lower and the power from the wind gust is converted to useful electricity.
Østfold Energi is co-owner of Kvalheim Kraft DA who owns and operates the windmill park Mehuken in Sogn og Fjordane on the west coast of Norway. The wind farm was opened in 2001 with five wind turbines. In 2010 the wind farm was extended with additional eight wind turbines. The annual production of electricity is now 65 GWh. The approximately 3,000 households in the Vågsøy municipality are now self-supported with electricity from the wind turbines at Mehuken.
Starting in 1975, NASA managed a program for the United States Department of Energy and the United States Department of Interior to develop utility-scale wind turbines for electric power, in response to the increase in oil prices.
A number of the world's largest wind turbines were developed and tested under this pioneering program. The program was an attempt to leap well beyond the then-current state of the art of wind turbine generators, and developed a number of technologies later adopted by the wind turbine industry. The development of the commercial industry however was delayed by a significant decrease in competing energy prices during the 1980s.
Most wind turbines around the world belong to individuals or corporations who use them to generate electric power or to perform mechanical work. As such, wind turbines are primarily working devices. However, the large size and height above surroundings of modern industrial wind turbines, combined with their moving rotors, often makes them conspicuous. A few localities have exploited the attention-getting nature of wind turbines, either by putting visitor centers on their bases, or by providing viewing areas. The wind turbines themselves are generally of conventional horizontal-axis, three-bladed design, and generate power to feed electrical grids, but they also serve the unconventional roles of technology demonstration, public relations, and education.
Many areas in Texas have wind conditions allowing for development of wind power generation. The number of commercially attractive sites has expanded as wind turbine technology has improved and development costs continue to drop. (→ Cost of electricity by source#United States) Particularly in southern Texas, the difference between land and off-shore air temperatures creates convection currents that generate significant winds during the middle of the day when electricity usage is typically at its peak level. Although these winds are less than in West Texas, they occur more predictably, more in correlation with consumption, and closer to consumers. Several wind farms have been developed at the Texas coast, to a combined 3,000 MW.
A turbine is a set of blades that are forced to turn from an external force. When the blades start turning, the shaft which this is connected to starts to spin, and the connecting generator then creates electricity. Examples of external forces that can be used to get the turbines going include wind, water, steam and gas. Turbines can be used in creating a continual power system because as long as the turbine blades turn, electricity is being created.
Professor James Blyth MA, LLD, FRSE FRSSA (4 April 1839 – 15 May 1906) was a Scottish electrical engineer and academic at Anderson's College, now the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow. He was a pioneer in the field of electricity generation through wind power and his wind turbine, which was used to light his holiday home in Marykirk, was the world's first-known structure by which electricity was generated from wind power. Blyth patented his design and later developed an improved model which served as an emergency power source at Montrose Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary & Dispensary for the next 30 years. Although Blyth received recognition for his contributions to science, electricity generation by wind power was considered uneconomical and no more wind turbines were built in the United Kingdom until 1951, some 64 years after Blyth built his first prototype.
In 1977 Boeing won the NASA and US-DOE contract for the design, fabrication, construction, installation and testing of several 2.5-megawatt wind turbine models in the United States. The first four MOD-2 models went into operation during the early 1980s. The dedication ceremony for the first three turbines was held on April 17, 1980, at Goodnoe Hills, Washington. On September 2, 1982, a fourth began operating at Medicine Bow, Wyoming. The Bonneville Power Administration bought the generated electricity of the Goodnoe Hills turbines and integrated it into the regional power grid. During the periods of May 1981, the three turbines at the Goodnoe Hills site formed the first wind farm in the world. The Goodnoe Hills site was primarily a research project for Boeing, Bonneville Power Administration, NASA and the Battelle Memorial Institute. The Solar Energy Research Institute also evaluated the suitability of megawatt-class wind turbines as a source of electricity. During 1986, the MOD-2 wind turbines of Goodnoe Hills were dismantled. In 1985, the last full year of operation, the combined electrical output of the three turbines was 8,251 megawatt-hours. The Medicine Bow MOD-2 wind turbine was sold for scrap in 1987. In 2008, the Goodnoe Hills Wind Farm opened on the same site with 47 REpower 2.0 MW wind turbines for a combined nameplate capacity of 94 MW. enXco/Power Holdings owns the wind farm, with PacifiCorp as the power purchaser.
In a wind farm, individual turbines are interconnected with a medium voltage (often 34.5 kV), power collection system and communications network. In general, a distance of 7D (7 × Rotor Diameter of the Wind Turbine) is set between each turbine in a fully developed wind farm. At a substation, this medium-voltage electric current is increased in voltage with a transformer for connection to the high voltage electric power transmission system.
The first electricity-generating wind turbine was a battery charging machine installed in July 1887 by Scottish academic James Blyth to light his holiday home in Marykirk, Scotland. Some months later American inventor Charles F. Brush was able to build the first automatically operated wind turbine after consulting local University professors and colleagues Jacob S. Gibbs and Brinsley Coleberd and successfully getting the blueprints peer-reviewed for electricity production in Cleveland, Ohio. Although Blyth's turbine was considered uneconomical in the United Kingdom, electricity generation by wind turbines was more cost effective in countries with widely scattered populations.
The first wind turbine used for the production of electricity was built in Scotland in July 1887 by Prof James Blyth of Anderson's College, Glasgow (the precursor of Strathclyde University).[18] Blyth's 10 m high, cloth-sailed wind turbine was installed in the garden of his holiday cottage at Marykirk in Kincardineshire and was used to charge accumulators developed by the Frenchman Camille Alphonse Faure, to power the lighting in the cottage,[18] thus making it the first house in the world to have its electricity supplied by wind power.[19] Blyth offered the surplus electricity to the people of Marykirk for lighting the main street, however, they turned down the offer as they thought electricity was "the work of the devil."[18] Although he later built a wind turbine to supply emergency power to the local Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary and Dispensary of Montrose, the invention never really caught on as the technology was not considered to be economically viable.[18]
From 1974 through the mid-1980s the United States government worked with industry to advance the technology and enable large commercial wind turbines. The NASA wind turbines were developed under a program to create a utility-scale wind turbine industry in the U.S. With funding from the National Science Foundation and later the United States Department of Energy (DOE), a total of 13 experimental wind turbines were put into operation, in four major wind turbine designs. This research and development program pioneered many of the multi-megawatt turbine technologies in use today, including: steel tube towers, variable-speed generators, composite blade materials, partial-span pitch control, as well as aerodynamic, structural, and acoustic engineering design capabilities. The large wind turbines developed under this effort set several world records for diameter and power output. The MOD-2 wind turbine cluster of three turbines produced 7.5 megawatts of power in 1981. In 1987, the MOD-5B was the largest single wind turbine operating in the world with a rotor diameter of nearly 100 meters and a rated power of 3.2 megawatts. It demonstrated an availability of 95 percent, an unparalleled level for a new first-unit wind turbine. The MOD-5B had the first large-scale variable speed drive train and a sectioned, two-blade rotor that enabled easy transport of the blades. The 4 megawatt WTS-4 held the world record for power output for over 20 years. Although the later units were sold commercially, none of these two-bladed machines were ever put into mass production. When oil prices declined by a factor of three from 1980 through the early 1990s,[34] many turbine manufacturers, both large and small, left the business. The commercial sales of the NASA/Boeing Mod-5B, for example, came to an end in 1987 when Boeing Engineering and Construction announced they were "planning to leave the market because low oil prices are keeping windmills for electricity generation uneconomical."[35]
In 2006 a proposal was made by Hawthorn Power, an offshoot of UK Coal, to construct three tall wind turbines on an unused part of the station's coal sorting area, north of the power station. Permission was granted for the turbines in February 2008. In July 2010, it was revealed that the project's new developer, Clipper Windpower, would be using the site to erect the country's first super-efficient wind turbines, called Liberty Wind Turbine. However, this meant the height of the turbines would increase from to . Each turbine would have a rating of 2.5 MW, but only three turbines would be built. The wind farm would produce enough electricity to provide power for 1,690 houses. One turbine is expected to be erected initially, while environmental issues are assessed.
Unlike other power sources, power developments from this source would face many challenges during its development timeline. Poor accessibility to potential sites is the first obstacle in the development of a wind farm. Most key transport routes around the country are too narrow or is constructed with tight turns to support transportation of turbines larger than . Constructing wind farms with turbines smaller than the current commercial-scale megawatt-class turbines would prove to be uneconomical due to the high cost incurred during development.
The great majority of wind turbines around the world belong to individuals or corporations who use them to generate electric power or to perform mechanical work. As such, wind turbines are primarily designed to be working devices. However, the large size and height above surroundings of modern industrial wind turbines, combined with their moving rotors, often makes them among the most conspicuous objects in their areas. A few localities have exploited the attention-getting nature of wind turbines by placing them on public display, either with visitor centers on their bases, or with viewing areas farther away. The wind turbines themselves are generally of conventional horizontal-axis, three-bladed design, and generate power to feed electrical grids, but they also serve the unconventional roles of technology demonstration, public relations, and education.Some wind turbines on public display go one further, with observation decks beneath their nacelles. The observation decks are accessed with stairs inside the tower.
Wind energy research dates back several decades to the 1970s when NASA developed an analytical model to predict wind turbine power generation during high winds. Today, both Sandia National Laboratories and National Renewable Energy Laboratory have programs dedicated to wind research. Sandia’s laboratory focuses on the advancement of materials, aerodynamics, and sensors. The NREL wind projects are centered on improving wind plant power production, reducing their capital costs, and making wind energy more cost effective overall.
The Field Laboratory for Optimized Wind Energy (FLOWE) at Caltech was established to research renewable approaches to wind energy farming technology practices that have the potential to reduce the cost, size, and environmental impact of wind energy production. The president of Sky WindPower Corporation thinks that wind turbines will be able to produce electricity at a cent/kWh at an average which in comparison to coal-generated electricity is a fractional of the cost.
A wind farm is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electric power. A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines, and cover an extended area of hundreds of square miles, but the land between the turbines may be used for agricultural or other purposes. A wind farm may also be located offshore.
Wind power harnesses mechanical energy from the constant flow of air over the surface of the earth. Wind power stations generally consist of wind farms, fields of wind turbines in locations with relatively high winds. A primary publicity issue regarding wind turbines are their older predecessors, such as the Altamont Pass Wind Farm in California. These older, smaller, wind turbines are rather noisy and densely located, making them very unattractive to the local population. The downwind side of the turbine does disrupt local low-level winds. Modern large wind turbines have mitigated these concerns, and have become a commercially important energy source. Many homeowners in areas with high winds and expensive electricity set up small wind turbines to reduce their electric bills.