Windmills and Cholla

by Greni Graph

Title

Windmills and Cholla

Artist

Greni Graph

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

Windmills southwest of Portales, New Mexico. A windmill is a machine which converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails. Originally windmills were developed for milling grain for food production. In the course of history, the windmill machinery was adapted to many other industrial uses. An important non-milling use is to pump water, either for land drainage or to extract groundwater. A wind turbine is a windmill-like structure specifically developed to generate electricity. They can be seen as the next step in the developments of the windmill. The first wind turbines were built by the end of the 19th century by Prof James Blyth in Scotland (1887),[29][30] Charles F. Brush in Cleveland, Ohio (1887�1888) and Poul la Cour in Denmark (1890s). La Cour's mill from 1896 later became the local powerplant of the village Askov. By 1908 there were 72 wind-driven electric generators in Denmark from 5 kW to 25 kW. By the 1930s windmills were widely used to generate electricity on farms in the United States where distribution systems had not yet been installed, built by companies like Jacobs Wind, Wincharger, Miller Airlite, Universal Aeroelectric, Paris-Dunn, Airline and Winpower and by the Dunlite Corporation for similar locations in Australia.
R�nland Windpark in Denmark

Forerunners of modern horizontal-axis utility-scale wind generators were the WIME-3D in service in Balaklava USSR from 1931 until 1942, a 100 kW generator on a 30 m (100 ft) tower, the Smith-Putnam wind turbine built in 1941 on the mountain known as Grandpa's Knob in Castleton, Vermont, USA of 1.25 MW and the NASA wind turbines developed from 1974 through the mid 1980s. The development of these 13 experimental wind turbines pioneered many of the wind turbine design technologies in use today, including: steel tube towers, variable-speed generators, composite blade materials, partial-span pitch control, as well as aerodynamic, structural, and acoustic engineering design capabilities. The modern wind power industry began in 1979 with the serial production of wind turbines by Danish manufacturers Kuriant, Vestas, Nordtank, and Bonus. These early turbines were small by today's standards, with capacities of 20�30 kW each. Since then, they have increased greatly in size, with the Enercon E-126 capable of delivering up to 7 MW, while wind turbine production has expanded to many countries. #200608220107

Uploaded

August 31st, 2012

Colors

Embed

Share

Tags