Wind power

Wind Power and Our Energy Needs: an Overview. Traditional windmills Power and energy in the modern world Global warming and climate change Renewable energy sources Wind energy conversion Energy payback and wind energy costs Intermittency issues Wind or nuclear? Costs compared with conventional generation Wind power's growth and potentia. The First Windmills. Hero's toy windmill Early Persian drag-driven windmills Chinese-drag-driven windmills The European windmill How post mills work Origins and economics. Seven Centuries of Service. Post mills Diffusion through Europe Medieval milling capacity Controlling the mill Sail developments Milling the grain Design evolution Smock mills and tower mills Control refinements Power output from traditional windmills Land drainage and other applications The windmill's nineteenth-century peak Causes of decline Steam power White bread Roller mills The American multi-bladed windpump. Generating Electricity: the Experimental Years, 1887 to 1973. First wind-powered electricity generation Danish beginnings: Poul la Cour The inter-war years Small wind-electric systems Grandpa's Knob, Vermont: the first megawatt-plus machine Wartime shortages rekindle Danish interest Post-war energy concerns, and Denmark's Gedser mill French and German post-war programmes. The Evolution of the Modern Wind Turbine, 1973 to 1990. 1973 oil crisis American Federal Wind Power Program First generation machines, Mod-0 and Mod-1 Second- and third-generation machines, Mod-2 and Mod-5 The American-Swedish WTS-4 The Darrieus vertical-axis wind turbine European national wind power programmes Sweden Germany Denmark Different Danish way forward The Tvind machine Small grid-connected wind turbines The Californian wind boom The first wind farms Danish imports The market peaks Environmental concerns Design evolution Danish success factors

Progress and Economics in Europe, 1973 to 1990. Denmark

Stall control or pitch control?

Shut-down in high wind speeds

Costs relative to the annual energy output

Costs per unit energy output

Cost comparisons

The Netherlands and Germany.

UK Progress, 1973 to 1990. Wind power: the least promising renewables option?

The offshore wind potential

Managing wind power's variability

The Department of Energy wind programme

The Orkney multi-megawatt wind turbine

Offshore wind farm assessment

Vertical-axis wind turbines

Other UK wind turbine developments

Lawson-Tancred

Fair Isle

Carmarthen Bay wind turbine test centre

Howden

Wind Energy Group

Institutional barriers

Privatisation and the Non-Fossil fuel Obligation (NFFO).

Development and Deployment, 1990 to 2008. Global overview

The 1990s, a decade of growth

Offshore wind makes progress

Danish overview

Germany

1991: a feed-in tariff established

Domestic manufacture

From 2000: the Renewable Energy Law

German overview

Spain

The 1994 feed-in tariff

Spanish overview

United Kingdom

The disappointing 1990s

Why NFFO failed

The renewables obligation

Offshore wind farms

UK overview

United States

Low growth beginnings

The Production Tax Credit (PTC) and "green power"

Momentum builds

US overview

Canada, Netherlands and Japan

India

China.

The Future: From Marginal to Mainstream. Low-carbon options for electricity generation

Carbon capture and storage

Nuclear power

Renewables

Wind power's progress

Cost-of-energy comparisons

Variability: keeping the lights on

Wind power's global growth

The power output from wind turbines

The performance of traditional windmills

Wind characteristics.