Wind Energy History

Considering the history of wind energy? Historically, for America after World War Two, wind energy was all but forgotten until the seventies, when America realized that the supply of the world's oil was not infinite.

The years before didn't give the US much warning that our illusion would be ending anytime soon. A gallon of gas hovered in the twenty-five cent range; commercials on the TV were full of smiling gas attendants singing and dancing about their wonderful gasoline; a dollars' worth of gas would last you from the middle of the week to payday on Friday. Some of the stations even gave you gifts for shopping there.

The end of that era came so quickly that everyone was taken by surprise. Suddenly there were long lines at the gas station; the number on your license plate designated you as an “odd” or an “even” and that dictated on which day of the week you could buy gas; and Las Vegas dimmed the casino lights in a patriotic gesture to save oil. Still, the price for a barrel of crude oil rose, and continues to this day.

History on wind energy, along with the old wind-spinners, had been dismantled and discarded long ago. They laid to rust in the grandparent's back yard, orchard, or pasture. There weren't a lot of kids asking about them, or about the history of wind energy. Had they asked, their grandparents could have told them that those were windmills, or wind-spinners, as they had been affectionately nicknamed. When the REA (Rural Electrification Administration) came through and brought electricity to the Great Plains and the Tennessee Valley, the farmers were forced to tear down the wind-spinners; you couldn't have both electricity and the mills.) By 1939, there were 417 co-ops serving over a quarter of a million households, and wind energy was history.

Europe didn't quite forget as readily as the Americans. Their gas and oil prices were never so artificially low. The Netherlands and Denmark continued in their conservation and wind-spinning, as they had for hundreds of years.

California, one of the hardest hit states from the oil embargo, has taken serious steps at wind farming. In the desert and pass communities, there are giant wind farms. In a growing number of communities, those with grid tie-in solar and/or wind cannot only lower their power bill, but sell back some of their generated power to the utilities.

How will History look on wind energy? California can still learn from the Europeans. The Netherlands, second only in densest population to Bangladesh, has vowed to generate 2000 megawatts by 2010.