LUBRICATION OF WIND TURBINES IS ANYTHING BUT A BREEZE
Since antiquity, a wide cross-section of people around the globe successfully harnessed the remarkable renewable energy of the wind. Wind energy impelled boats down the iconic Nile River as far back as 5000 BCE. By 200 BCE rudimentary windmills in China were pumping water, while vertical–axis windmills with woven reed sails were grinding grain in Persia and in the Middle East. Many ancient cultures associated the element of air and, thereby, wind, with spirit. Thus, the Egyptian Goddess Isis was known as the controller of the winds and the “living north wind.” For, although, these forces are invisible, they are palpable and powerful, and we are inextricably moved by their presence. Just as we breathe air to live, the wind animates a sail and puts it into nearly-miraculous motion.
technology to the New World in the late 19th Century, they started using windmills to pump water for farms and ranches and later to generate electricity for residences and business.
American colonists used windmills to grind wheat and corn, to pump water and to cut wood at sawmills. The nascent rise of electric power saw wind energy fi nding new applications in lighting buildings remotely from centrally generated power. Throughout the 20th Century, small wind plants, suitable for farms and residences, and larger utility-scale wind farms, that could be connected to electricity grids, were developed.
The oil shortages of the 1970s revamped the energy landscape for the U.S. and for the world at large. It fueled a demand for alternative energy sources, opening the fl oodgates for the reemergence of the wind turbine to produce electricity.
Figure 1: Wind Energy (Source: U.S. News & World Report: 5 Graphs About Wind Energy, July 17, 2014)
The sheer sublimity of meteorological phenomenon has fascinated civilization for thousands of years. Ancient Greek mythology is an example of elements of weather being personifi ed as deities. Today, while we view the wind through a more scientifi c lens, we are no less enamored of, and dependent upon, its awesome propulsive possibilities.
Before we focus on the state of wind turbines today, and examine their unique advantages and challenges, let’s take a sail down memory lane and pinwheel back to the more recent history of wind energy: New modes of harnessing energy from the wind fl owed around the globe. By the 11th Century, people in the Middle East employed windmills extensively for food production. Returning merchants and crusaders who were blown away by this idea then carried news of it back to Europe. The Dutch, the people who are, perhaps, most closely identifi ed with the monolithic imagery of the mighty windmill, refi ned the device and adapted it for draining lakes and marshes in the Rhine River Delta. When settlers took this
During the time period of 1974 through the mid-1980s, the U.S. government worked with industry to advance the technology and enable development and deployment of massive commercial wind turbines. Large-scale research wind turbines were developed under a program overseen by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to create a utility-scale wind turbine industry in the United States. With funding from the National Science Foundation and later followed by monetary support from the U.S. Department of Energy, 13 experimental turbines were put into use utilizing four major wind turbine designs. This research and development program preceded several of the multi-megawatt turbine technologies active today. The monolithic wind turbines developed under the auspices of this program set several world records for diameter and power output.
Anemic oil prices threatened to render electricity from wind to be cost prohibitive in the 1980s and 1990s. However, thanks, in part, to federal and state tax incentives implemented in the 1980s, wind energy managed to thrive in California. These incentives
Figure 2: Isis The Goddess of Fertility (Source: Ask Aladdin: Your Egypt Travel Experts)
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