Researched
Modern Wind Turbines
Danish and Californian turbines of the 1980s turn the windmill into a power generator.
Open in the interactive tree →Poul la Cour built a wind turbine for electricity in Denmark as early as 1891; in 1941 the first megawatt-class machine ran in Vermont. The oil crises of the 1970s led Denmark and California to series-ready three-blade rotors, and in 1991 Vindeby became the first offshore wind farm. With aircraft aerodynamics and series production, turbines grew from 50 kW to over 10 MW.
Prerequisites
- Windmill~1185
- Electrification1882
- Airplane1903
- Plastics (Bakelite to Nylon)1907-1953Modern rotor blades are glass-fibre reinforced plastic, built on polymer chemistry
- Carbon-Fibre Composites1963Long rotor blades use carbon-fibre composites
- Neodymium Magnets1982Direct-drive wind generators use neodymium magnets