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Examining The History Of Solar And Wind Power

Tuesday, 26 April 2011

By Russell Strider


The history of solar and wind power goes back several thousand years. Wind power has been around since human beings have been making use of sails. The first introduction of a machine powered by wind was invented by a Greek engineer known as Heron. For a long time windmills were the most common examples of utilizing wind power. The first windmills made an appearance in a region of Iran somewhere between the 7th and 9th centuries, and they made an appearance in Europe in the 12th century.

The first windmill to generate electricity was made in Scotland by James Blyth in 1887. However, it wasn't regarded as being economically practical and as such it was not extensively developed. Denmark grabbed the baton and focused on developing the technology. During 1978 a groundbreaking multi-megawatt turbine was constructed.

After this, the US government worked together with industry leaders to further develop this technology. This brought about a lot of features available today such as variable speed generators. Recently the wind power industry has expanded greatly, as a result of concerns about the exhaustion of non-renewable fuels.

The history of solar and wind power are similar because both may be traced to distant civilizations. Greeks and Native Americans both constructed houses in the sides of hills to benefit from the heat. Romans utilized glass to trap the warmth of the sun in their homes. Nonetheless, in spite of this lengthy history the first solar collector was not built until 1776, by Horace de Saussere. Around a hundred years later Auguste Mouchout built a solar driven steam engine. It was extremely expensive and no more were built. Twenty years later the first solar cells were constructed.

In spite of this leap it took until the 1950's for substantial strides to be made, as solar energy was put to use in the mainstream for the very first time. It was nevertheless cheaper to use oil to power homes, and so it took until the oil embargo of the 1980's to allow solar energy to come to the fore. Its worldwide recognition has steadily increased since then, and in the 1990's over a million houses had some form of solar energy installed.

Solar and wind energy has been utilized throughout human history. Ever since the early breakthroughs of the Greeks and Romans, humans have been developing and advancing the technology. Now that we are aware of the issues with non-renewable fossil fuels, much research money is spent on finding alternative power sources. Nature supplies us with a lot of energy, so through learning the history of solar and wind power specialists can maximize the ability to use it effectively.




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