Electricity is the work of the devil
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Sailing ships have been using wind power for over 5,000 years and windmills for ventilation, irrigation and for the milling of grains, emerged in significant numbers about 1,300 years ago in Afghanistan. Wind technology soon spread to the known world. Windmills became a common sight all over Europe.
In an increasingly energy conscious world, wind farms are emerging to help reduce dependency of fossil fuels.
The first windmill for electricity production was built in Scotland in July 1887 by Prof James Blyth of Anderson’s College, Glasgow (the precursor of Strathclyde University). Blyth’s 33-foot (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, thus making it the first house in the world to have its electricity supplied by wind power. Blyth offered the surplus electricity to the people of Maykirk for lighting the main street, however, they turned down the offer as they thought electricity was “the work of the devil.” Although he later built a wind machine 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.
The popularity of using the energy of the wind has always fluctuated with the price of fossil fuels. When fuel prices fell after World War II, interest in wind turbines waned. The oil shortages of the 1970s changed the energy picture for the world. It created an interest in alternative energy sources, paving the way for the re-entry of the windmill to generate electricity. The wind turbines rushed to market in the 1970s were inefficient and noisy. Since then, the industry has made advancements in blade designs, electronic drives and controls, and turbines, coupled with better manufacturing and careful siting of wind machines. These factors have brought wind power costs down precipitously and put wind on economic parity with coal-based electricity.
A centuries old European style windmill
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The farms do take some getting used to, but the environmental and cost savings could well be worth it and even could help lessen the risk of another BP disaster down the road.
Windmills are lovely. Windfarms are bloody awful carbuncles on the landscape.