Page 23 - Fluid Power Engineering

CHAPTER1

Overview of Wind

Energy Business

First, there is the power of the Wind, constantly exerted over the
globe . . . Here is an almost incalculable power at our disposal, yet how
trifling the use we make of it.
—Henry David Thoreau, American naturalist and author
(1834)

Introduction
The energy of wind has been exploited for thousands of years. The old-
est applications of wind energy include extracting water from wells,
makingflouroutofgrain,andotheragriculturalapplications.Inrecent
times, the use of wind energy has evolved to, primarily, generation of
electricity.
The field of wind energy blossomed in 1970s after the oil crisis,
with a large infusion of research money in the United States, Denmark,
and Germany to find alternative sources of energy. By the early 1980s,
incentives for alternative sources of energy had vanished in the United
States and, therefore, the wind energy field shrank significantly. In-
vestments continued in Europe and, until recently, Europe led in terms
of technology and wind capacity installations.

Worldwide Business of Wind Energy
The data presented in this section is from the World Wind Energy
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Report 2009 by the World Wind Energy Association. According to this
report, in 2009, wind energy was a 50 billion Euro business in terms
of revenue and it employed about 550,000 people around the world.

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