A Look At The History Of Solar And Wind Power
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- 7/7/2011
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The history of solar and wind power stretches back several thousand years. Wind power has been around since humans have been making use of sails. The first introduction of a machine driven by wind was developed by a Greek engineer named Heron. For a long time windmills were the most common examples of making use of wind energy. The very first windmills appeared in a region of Iran somewhere between the 7th and 9th centuries, and they appeared in Europe in the 12th century. The first windmill to generate electrical power was built in Scotland by James Blyth in 1887. Nonetheless, it was not regarded as being economically practical and as such it wasn't widely produced. Denmark grabbed the baton and focused on improving the technology. In 1978 a groundbreaking multi-megawatt turbine was built.Following this, the US government worked together with industry leaders to further advance this technology. This contributed to lots of features which exist right now such as variable speed generators. Recently the wind energy industry has expanded enormously, as a consequence of worries about the depletion of non-renewable fuels.The history of solar and wind power are similar since both may be traced back to previous civilizations. Greeks and Native Americans both constructed homes into the sides of hills to benefit from the heat. Romans used glass to trap the warmth of the sun in their houses. Nevertheless, even with this lengthy history the first solar collector was not constructed until 1776, by Horace de Saussere. Around a hundred years later Auguste Mouchout created a solar powered steam engine. It was really expensive and no more were built. Two decades later the initial solar cells were developed.Despite this leap it took until the 1950's for substantial strides to be made, as solar power was used in the mainstream for the first time. It was nevertheless more affordable to use oil to power homes, and so it took until the oil embargo of the 1980's to enable solar energy to come to the forefront. Its global recognition has gradually risen since then, and in the 1990's more than one million homes had some form of solar energy installed. Solar and wind power has been utilized all through human history. Ever since the early discoveries of the Greeks and Romans, people have been improving and advancing the technology. Now that we're conscious of the issues with non-renewable fossil fuels, much research money is spent on discovering alternative energy sources. Mother nature provides us with a lot of energy, so through learning the history of solar and wind power experts can improve the capacity to harness it effectively.