History of wind energy

Today wind power It is one of the most widely used renewable energy sources and one that has achieved the greatest technical development in recent decades.

The use and exploitation of wind energy are very old by man. The first evidence of the use of wind dates back to 3000 BC where they used sailing ships on the Nile to move and in the XNUMXth century BC during the reign of Hammurabi in Babylon they used an irrigation system based on windmills for pumping water. So let's go back in time and learn a little more about the history of wind energy.

Origins and history of wind energy

Around the year 1000 AD the first windmills are used in the Middle East and during the late Middle Ages mechanical wind energy equipment began to be used in Europe.

These equipment or mills became popular especially in Holland where from the middle of the XNUMXth century it was used to dry out swamps and lagoons as well as for the grinding of grains, they were multi-blade mills, quite slow.

The predecessor models of the current ones appear in the XNUMXth century and the first were manufactured by Jacobs for the electricity generation in rural areas, with 3 KW equipment during the 30s in the US In 1940, the first large and faster windmills appeared with a generation capacity of 1 MW.

During the Second World War the projects and developments of devices such as the vertical wind turbine wind turbines to produce electricity because the oil it was much cheaper and competitive in the energy market.

The next major milestone in the history of wind energy occurs en the 70s when the oil crisis broke out This technology resurfaces again and progressively did not stop its growth and use throughout the world until today.

In these last two decades, much technological progress has been made and very efficient equipment with a great capacity for Energy production cleaning not only on land but also at sea.

Wind energy will be one of the main renewable energy sources of the XNUMXst century in a large number of countries, due to the excellent characteristics they offer.