Modern windmills, or more precisely wind turbines, are not structures that evoke affection or evoke a feeling of idyllic comfort. Rather, it was created out of an urgent need, the need for a better means of generating electricity, an invention created by society to contaminate ourselves into oblivion.
It’s a device that creates a degree of anxiety in the public mind, and a harsh reminder of how we all had to stay in shape. If Cervantes was right and seventeenth-century Spaniards saw such mills as a symbol of threat, some of us might feel the same way today, except the stakes, our very existence, are much higher.
It is somewhat surprising that it took so long for the invention of wind power generators.
In 1887, more than 50 years after British physicist Michael Faraday invented the generator, a Scotsman named James Bryce generated his own electricity by harnessing the kinetic energy of the air, the wind blowing around his holiday home in northeastern Scotland. His homemade machine was able to generate enough electricity to light all 10 incandescent light bulbs and power a small lathe. There were no running costs at all. The wind in Merrikirk, Aberdeenshire, like wind elsewhere around the world, was, outwardly at least, a precious free gift of nature.
The context of this little history contains an unavoidable irony. By the time of James Bryce, the Industrial Revolution was about 90 years old and in full swing. The novel idea of power generation, which involved vastly intensifying various industrial processes and using steam-powered turbines to generate electricity, happened to have particular support in Scotland at the time. The reason for this was that Scotland was rich in coal. Steam is most commonly produced by burning coal and boiling water.
For the wealthy owners of Scotland’s coal mines, the idea of generating electricity from something free like wind was an attack on the noble principles of capitalism and sheer impudence.
Fossil fuel advocates opposed wind power from the beginning. Their first target was Professor James Bryce.
He taught engineering at a local university in Glasgow and knew how to turn the fascination with the potential of wind power into reality. In the front garden of a small villa on the main street, he built a rickety wooden tower more than 30 feet high, towering above the roof. It was fitted with four 13-foot tall canvas sails and suspended by steel arms.
When the wind blew, the sails turned, like a flour mill, and at the same time turned a heavy metal spindle, which, through a series of gears, turned a vertical spindle. At its base, through more gears, rotation is translated into movement of a second horizontal rod, which turns a huge iron flywheel. It is connected by a sturdy rope to a so-called Bourgin dynamo, a state-of-the-art direct current generator in which a coil of copper wire rotates between the wings of a powerful magnet, a pair of sturdy copper wires that generate a constant stream of electrons, now known as electricity.
Bryce was an insightful man. Although he was excited to have power in his little cottage, he didn’t immediately connect the wires that carried it to his light bulbs and power tools in his workshop. If he did, his nighttime illumination would be limited to the moments when the wind outside blew and the canvas sails turned. He solved this problem by connecting it to an imported, newly invented French generator. accumulatorthe forerunner of modern rechargeable batteries. This arrangement gave him access to electricity when he needed it.
Furthermore, his windmills and generators worked very well, and although the North Sea winds were very strong, his own domestic demand was very modest, so he found himself in the happy position of having power to spare and being able to provide it to his neighbors. But here the intervention of the fossil fuel industry must be suspected, someone spread the rumor that the electricity produced in this way is dangerous. devil’s work. He offered to wire, connect and illuminate all the streetlights along the village center of Merrikirk, but the town fathers, under unspecified community pressure, declined his offer, and the roads remained dark for a quarter of a century while Blyth’s little house was lit and created a cozy atmosphere.
He went on to build even larger versions of his home wind turbine for the Montrose Asylum for the Insane, the only institution willing to accept his biggie. The windmill was mounted on a vertical spindle, so it didn’t need to direct the wind like traditional windmills, and it ran comfortably for 27 years, charging the batteries that provided light for the hospital’s patients and staff until it was dismantled in 1914, eight years after its inventor’s death.
As of this writing, more than one-tenth of America’s electricity is generated by wind. In some European countries, the proportion is much higher. In stormy Denmark, half of the country’s electricity comes from wind power, in Germany, a quarter, in Brazil, wind power generation has decreased, and in India, more than 10% of electricity comes from wind power, and it is increasing.
In China, the rise of wind power and the scale of the machinery to run it is truly astronomical. From the western mountains of Yunnan and Sichuan, and the endlessly windy plateaus of Chinese-occupied Tibet, to the coasts off Shanghai in the east and the island of Hainan in the south, windmills of ever-increasing size make their languid presence a perfectly normal feature on every horizon, on every horizon.
Of course, questions arise. The bird flies into the blade and dies. Some people are irritated by the noise emanating from the tower. Some people complain about the desolate landscape of the countryside. Oil leaking from the generator can also discolor the blades, making the tower look rotten. Some wonder how these giant blades will be dismantled and disposed of after their 20-year lifespan. And there are accidents that are inevitable when maintaining equipment at such heights.
But while wind turbines are today considered a complete success in every other sense, one question remains: Given that Faraday invented the generator in 1831, and just 50 years later Blyth used a wind generator to light up a cottage in a Scottish village, why did it take another century for the world to realize the potential of wind? The Earth suffered greatly in that century. That’s because the burning of coal and oil, which has fueled tens of thousands of power plants around the world for years, has produced vast amounts of fossil fuel byproducts. With a little thought and imagination, we could have taken advantage of the free, clean, endless wind above us instead. It was a missed opportunity and had an immeasurable impact on all of us. Let’s hope it’s not too late.
Simon Winchester recently said,This article has been edited based on “The History and Future of Wind”.
