The History of Wind Energy

Wind has been used as a source of energy for more than 1500 years. In times when other sources of energy were unknown or scarce, wind energy represented a successful means for industrial and economic development. Wind energy became a marginal source once cheaper, easier to exploit and easily obtainable sources of energy became available. From the point of view of the contribution of wind energy to economic development, one can divide the history of wind energy into four overlapping time periods (see Figure 1.1). Except in the first period, the emphasis here is the generation of power by wind: