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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Archivio istituzionale della ricerca - Università di Padova Università degli Studi di Padova Padua Research Archive - Institutional Repository "Blowin' in the Wind" Original Citation: Availability: This version is available at: 11577/3257336 since: 2018-02-15T12:46:15Z Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. Published version: DOI: 10.1109/MIE.2017.2652798 Terms of use: Open Access This article is made available under terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Guidelines, as described at http://www.unipd.it/download/file/fid/55401 (Italian only) (Article begins on next page) Historical by Massimo Guarnieri “Blowin’ in the Wind” Massimo Guarnieri he title of this article may sug- Ocean atolls, a millenarian conquest in northern Europe. Being mounted gest that it constitutes a tribute that was completed in about the tenth on a post, it could be oriented in the T to the recent Nobel Prize in Lit- century AD, when Eastern Polynesia wind’s direction by acting on a rudder. erature and a sweet remembrance of and Easter Island were reached. It was It could be placed far from rivers and our 20s for those of us who are now in again the power of wind that made pos- creeks and used when the water froze, our 60s. That could be the case. After sible the oceanic navigations of the ex- and it also allowed farmers to escape all, scientists and tech- plorers who discovered the mill right that ensured only feu- nicians live in a diversi- other continents then dal lords with the ownership of water fied and interconnected WINDMILLS WERE unknown in Europe in mills. Around the end of the 13th cen- world where culture, art, FIRST USED AS the 16th–18th centuries, tury, this design evolved into the tow- and civil actions are in- PRODUCTIVE starting with Christopher er-type mill, with a brick or stone tower terdependent with tech- Columbus. Sails were and a wooden rotating turret, suitable DEVICES IN nology. However, regard- also used for overland to produce much higher power thanks less of my esteem for Mr. EASTERN PERSIA mobility, in high-speed to larger blades, which spread particu- Bob Dylan, this column IN THE NINTH chariots reported in Chi- larly in The Netherlands, being used deals with exploiting CENTURY OR SOME na in the sixth century for grinding grain, pumping water, and wind for energy, a long- TIME EARLIER. AD and one millennium term challenge to human- later in Europe [2]. ity, much longer than the time cannon The exploitation of wind power to balls flew. operate a machine appeared much lat- Humans first harnessed wind for er than sailing. An early account was sailing. In the sixth millennium BC, given by Heron of Alexandria in the boats sailed the Persian Gulf to trade first century AD, describing a windmill Ubaid pottery [1]. Since the fourth mil- for pumping air pressure in a musical lennium BC, Egyptian reed boats sailed organ [3]. Starting in the eighth cen- the Nile upstream, boosting trade tury, similar entertaining uses of the among cities and promoting national windmill and wind power were made unity. Sailing ships were vital for early in Baghdad for the amusement of the Mediterranean traders, Minoans from Abbasid caliphs. Windmills were first the third millennium BC, and Myce- used as productive devices in eastern naeans and Phoenicians from the 12th Persia in the ninth century or some century BC, voyaging as far as the Brit- time earlier. These were half-screened, ish Islands, the Gulf of Guinea, and So- vertical-axis, direct-drive machines for malia. Wind allowed the Romans and grinding corn or raising water. They Chinese to consolidate their empires spread to China, India, and the Islam- sailing seas and rivers. Wind blew Vi- ic world. In the early 12th century, a king sails to Labrador and Newfound- horizontal axis version came into use land. In the 16th century BC, it pushed in the Mediterranean lands where the Lapita people to colonize the Pacific wind blows in a constant direction, from the Cyclades islands to Spain, in a design that can still be found around FIGURE 1 — A medieval Mediterranean Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIE.2017.2652798 there (Figure 1) [4]. In the same cen- windmill still standing in Formentera, Belearic Date of publication: 21 March 2017 tury, the wooden post mill appeared Islands, Spain. MARCH 2017 ■ IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE 63 renewables [7], but he concluded that windmills were too costly to be attrac- tive as electric power generators for lighting, the most promising applica- tion at that time, after the invention of viable arc and incandescent lamps [8] and before the creation of electricity distribution by Thomas Edison [9]. Nev- ertheless, others explored the technol- ogy. The first successful wind electric turbine was built in 1887 by James Blyth (1839–1906), a Scot, as was Wil- liam Thomson, and a professor at Glasgow and West of Scotland Tech- nical College, which eventually became Strathclyde University. The machine was intended to recharge the Faure’s FIGURE 2 — The Blyth’s wind turbine built by Blyth (not the first one of 1887) to power the accumulators that provided lighting at lighting at his summer home in Marykirk, Scotland. For size evaluation, note the woman his holiday home in Marykirk, Scotland standing in front of the battery shed. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.) (Figure 2) [10]. It was provided with a vertical shaft with 4-m-high sails at right operating sawmills. It later evolved distance between the grinder stones. angles to each other and a flywheel that into the smock mill, a more advanced The device inspired James Watt with drove a dynamo by means of a rope [11]. though basically similar design. In the centrifugal governor for feedback Based on the Robinson anemometer these mills, the wooden lattice blades regulating the steam supplied to his design, reportedly, it was passively self- had to be covered with more or less engine, patented in 1788. In turn, Watt’s stalling against strong wind and could extended canvas sails, depending on governor inspired the paper “On Gov- be quickly shut down. Blyth offered to the wind force. But they ernors,” published by light the local main street with such were always in danger of James Clerk Maxwell in a device, but the people of Marykirk 1868 [5], a seminal work turned down the offer, as they deemed being destroyed by sud- THE DEVELOPMENT den storms. in control theory. By the electricity “the work of the devil.” How- In 1745, an English- OF A PRACTICAL mid-19th century, such ever, the electric windmill was a suc- man, Edmund Lee, pat- RECHARGEABLE ad vancements had made cess that earned Blyth prizes and ented the fantail, a small LEAD-ACID BATTERY wind an important source recognition in the scientific community. wind wheel mounted at a WAS PIVOTAL of energy, with 20,000 mills It was demolished in 1914. The design right angle to the blades FOR PIONEERING operating in France, 10,000 was patented in 1891 and was licensed in Great Britain, and 12,000 for an electric windmill that was built that feedback oriented ELECTRICITY them toward the wind. in the Netherlands, and for Montrose Asylum in 1895. In 1772, Andrew Meikle GENERATION FROM by 1900, about 2,500 pro- In 1888, Charles F. Brush (1849– (1719–1811), a Scot, replaced WIND POWER. vided mechanical power 1929), one of the U.S. electrical lighting can vas sails with spring- to pumps and mills in Den- pioneers [8], built another very early controlled shutters, which were hand mark. Perhaps 6 million were in op- successful wind generator for his resi- operated by means of a lever and could eration on farms around the American dence in Cleveland, Ohio, resorting to lose lift in the case of a storm. Meikle’s Midwest to power irrigation pumps in the skills of his engineering company. shutters were improved in 1807 by civil the period 1850–1900. The mill consisted of a horizontal- engineer William Cubbit (1785–1861), The development of a practical re- axis 144-twisted-blade rotor with a with a mechanism to au tomatically chargeable lead-acid battery by Camille diameter of 17 m mounted on an 18- adjust the shutter tilt without stop- Alphonse Faure (1840–1898) in 1881 m-high iron lattice tower (Figure 3). ping the mill. An alternative device for was pivotal not only for the viability of The belt-driven dynamo generated a adjusting the blade lift from inside the early electric cars but also for pioneer- maximum power of 12 kW spinning at mill was invented by a Frenchman, ing electricity generation from wind 500 r/min and was provided with a ful- Pierre-Théophile Berton, a few decades power [6]. In fact, in the same year, Sir ly automated electric control system later. In 1787, Thomas Mead invented William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, en suring load voltage in the range of the lift tenter based on rotating spheres wrote an overview on energy sources 70–75 V [12]. It was used for recharg- that, placed in rotation by the blades, where he proposed that batteries could ing a 408-cell battery and for pow- raised and lowered, depending on the be used for assuring supply continuity ering electric lights, two of the arc spinning speed, thus adjusting the against intermittent generation from type and about 100 incandescent, in 64 IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE ■ MARCH 2017 FIGURE 4 — The Smith–Putnam wind turbine on Grandpa’s Knob in Vermont, circa 1941.