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 . 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 , 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 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 , 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 [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. It was the world’s first megawatt-size power turbine. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia C ommons.)

in 1936, domestic sales collapsed, but there were still good market opportuni- ties for wind turbines abroad. By 1936, small machines had become popular FIGURE 3 — The Brush’s wind turbine of 1888 had a 17-m diameter, and the belt- driven in Australia to service isolated users. dynamo generated a maximum power of 12 kW spinning at 500 r/min and was provided with Before World War II, two much larger a fully automated electric control system ensuring load voltage in the range 70–75 V. The large rectangular shape to the left of the rotor is the vane, used to move the blades into the wind. For turbines, provided with steel lattice size evaluation, note the gardener pushing lawnmower to right. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia towers, were built in the USSR and the C ommons.) . In 1931, WIME D-30, a 100-kW generator with a 30-m three- blade rotor atop a 30-m tower, was com - addition to three laboratory motors. 5–25 kW were in operation in 1908, with pleted and connected to the 6.3-kV It operated until 1900, when it was re- rotor diameter up to 24 m mounted on local power grid at Balaklava, near Yalta, placed by a grid connec- 25-m towers, and electric Crimea. In 1941, a two-blade 1.25-MW tion, and was disposed windmills grew to become turbine designed by P.C. Putnam was of eight years later. IN POSTWAR important sources of power installed by the S. Morgan Smith Com- In 1891, scientist and in in the first de- pany at Castelton, Vermont (Figure 4). teacher Poul la Cour TIMES, CHEAP cades of the 20th century. It was the first turbine to exceed 1 MW (1846–1908) built a wind ELECTRICITY FROM In the United States, and operated for a short time before a generator to power a FOSSIL FUELS AND wind generators were in- failure of a blade put it out of service school at Askov, Den- NUCLEAR ENERGY dustrially produced begin- permanently. Similar experiments were mark, that he endowed PUT A TEMPORARY ning in 1927 for lighting and conducted in in the period with a hydrogen genera- STOP TO THE battery charging in farms 1930–1950. tor (from water electroly- not yet reached by elec- During the war, several low-voltage sis) and a storage system DEVELOPMENT OF tricity distribution from small-power wind generators were built and later with a regulator WIND GENERATORS. central stations [14]. They in northern Europe to provide power for stabilizing the output featured steel lattice tow- to final users who could no longer rely power, dubbed the Kratostate [13]. A ers and, typically, two-blade rotors and on dependable grid power. Generators successor version was used to provide were rated at hundreds to thousands from 5 kW to 100 kW were used in Den- light to the village of Askov. La Cour’s of watts. Fluid-dynamic brakes were mark in that period. pioneering work paved the way for used to regulate the rotation speed. In postwar times, cheap electric- wind power development in Denmark, When electric grids were extended to ity from fossil fuels and nuclear en- where 72 electric wind generators rated rural areas in the United States starting ergy put a temporary stop to the

MARCH 2017 ■ IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE 65 FIGURE 5 — A wind turbine installed on the tidal island of Neuwerk, Germany, in 1946. It had a 15-m rotor atop a guyed steel lattice tower with mechanical transmission to an 18-kW generator located at ground level. It was provided with automatic rotor position- ing depending on the wind velocity. (Photo courtesy of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine, FIGURE 6 — The experimental 800-kVA BEST-Romani aerogenerator (wind turbine) put into vol. 7, no. 5, 2009.) operation in Nogent-le-Roi, France, in 1955. (Photo courtesy of Jean-Luc Cavey.) development of wind generators, al- three blades (in place of the four then of its commissioning in 1978 and nearly though a few exceptions occurred. In common in the country) and stall re - 40 years later is still in service. It demon- 1946, a turbine with a 15-m rotor atop a gulation and fixed the basic Danish strated that multimegawatt wind genera- guyed steel lattice tower and mechanical design for the next local turbine ar- tors were possible, pushed the country tra nsmission to an 18-kW generator chitecture. At that time, major issues toward a leading position in wind ener- located at the tower foot was installed were operation at low wind speed, gy, and set the background over which in the tidal island of Neuwerk, Germa- 5–20 m/s, and resistance against strong Vestas’s and Siemens’s wind technology ny (Figure 5). It was provided with au- winds or storms. was developed. Following tomatic rotor positioning depending When the 1973 oil crisis the Danish example, other on the wind velocity. This device re- struck, several industri- European countries under- IN 1974, NASA sisted 144-km/h winds and operated alized nations regarded took major initiatives in over 20 years, supplying a lighthouse nuclear energy as a viable LAUNCHED wind power development, and residences with power, before alternative for power gen- A RESEARCH notably Germany and Spain. being replaced by a submarine cable eration. The Tvind coun- PROGRAM AIMED In 1978, a Danish blade pro- to the mainland [15]. A three-blade tur- terculture educational AT DEVELOPING ducer, Økær, distrustful of bine with a lattice tower developed by movement that flourished LARGE UTILITY- Tvind principles, started John Brown Engineering, Glasgow, was in Denmark in the 1970s manufacturing blades that SCALE WIND installed in the remote Orkney Islands rejected that option and rotated clockwise, the op- off northern Scotland in 1951. It was the turned its attention to GENERATORS. posite of the common di- first to be connected to a local grid in wind power, building small rection at the time (and of the , but it did not last turbines. A Tvind Mill Team was formed that used in Tvind’s turbines). Because long against the strength of storms. An with teachers, students, and volunteers Økær’s blades were later adopted by 800-kVA experimental turbine operat- who, opposed by the official techno- the major turbine producers, clockwise ed at the Station d’Etude de l’Energie du logical culture, worked for three years rotation became standard. Vent in Nogent-le-Roi, France, between to design and construct Tvind Power, On the other side of the Atlan- 1955 and 1966 ( Figure 6) [16]. An ad- an innovative 2-MW turbine featuring tic Ocean, in 1974, NASA launched vanced wind generator was installed a three-blade 54-m wingspan, pitch a re search program funded by the by Johannes Juul at Gedser, Denmark, control, and a 54-m tubular tower [17]. It National Science Foundation and in 1957. It featured a 24-m rotor with was the biggest in the world at the time later by the Department of Energy

66 IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE ■ MARCH 2017 aimed at developing large utility-scale wind generators that resulted in the construction of 13 experimental two- blade turbines in partnership with industrial companies by the mid- 1980s [18]. Independently of Europe- an developers, they pioneered some innovative technologies later ad- opted in industrial multimegawatt machines, such as tubular tower, variable speed, composite materi- als for blades, and partial-span pitch control, together with other advanced engineering solutions. The United Technologies WTS-4 wind turbine, placed into operation in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, in 1982, was rated 4 MW, a world record held for 20 years. The 3.2-MW Boeing MOD-5B, installed in Ohau, Hawaii, in 1987, had a 97.5-m rotor on a 60-m tower that was the largest in the world ( Figure 7). Trans- portation to the site was made easier by the sectioned blade design. How- ever, these turbines did not go into mass production, and their develop- ment was hampered by a deflation in FIGURE 7 — The NASA/Department of Energy MOD-5B wind turbine at Oahu, Hawaii. This oil prices in the following years, until 100-m diameter, two-bladed turbine was the largest in the world during the early 1990s. tax rebates were introduced for wind (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.) energy, notably in California. The alternative concept of the ver- tical axis, exploited in early Persian windmills and in Blyth’s first suc- cessful wind generator of 1887, was reintroduced by French aeronautical engineer Georges Jean Marie Darrieus (1888–1979) in 1931. Its major advan- tage is no need to be pointed into the wind and no need for a stiff tower, but it also presents some major disadvan- tages, such as no self-start and pulsing mechanical power, which can start po- tentially catastrophic resonant modes. Even though these drawbacks made Darrieus’s turbine less competitive in the megawatt class, some of them were built. The largest was Éole, a 4-MW 110-m-high turbine installed in La Nor- dais wind farm at Cap Chat, Gaspésie, Quebec, in 1987 (Figure 8). It went out of service in 1993 due to a fault in the base bearing and was never repaired. Now, it still stands as a tourist attrac- tion. After such outcomes, the verti- cal axis concept was relinquished FIGURE 8 — The Éole, a 4-MW 110-m Darrieus’s vertical-axis wind turbine installed at Cap Chat, Gaspésie, Quebec, in 1987 is still the largest in the world. A fault in the base bearing put it permanently out of service in 1993. (continued on page 83)

MARCH 2017 ■ IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE 67 (https://ieee-collabratec.ieee .org/app/question/74938) and more! Please note that start- ing this year, IEEE S&YPA has their own budget for improv- ing our service and excel- lence. So good luck in 2017, and let’s use our media to communicate with each oth- er, because “… to have com- munion with the people, that is the most important thing” ( https://www.brainyquote .com/quotes/quotes/p/popejohn FIGURE 4 – A group gathers at the conclusion of the 3Ms session, with the students’ 3-min speeches and pa162460.html). films running on the screen in the background.

Historical (continued from page 67)

in large-scale turbines, but it has ac - support in addition to active power. [9] M. Guarnieri, “The beginning of electric ener- hieved better success in medium and Recently, technology development has gy transmission: Part one,” IEEE Ind. Electron. Mag., vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 57–60, Mar. 2013. small-size devices, in the H-rotor and resulted in turbines in the class of 8 [10] T. J. Price, “James Blyth—Britain’s first mod- helical blade designs. MW boding that a substantial contri- ern wind power engineer,” Wind Eng., vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 191–200, May 2005. Until 1970, the standard generator bution to a carbon-free energy future [11] J. Blyth, “On the application of wind power to was a squirrel-cage induction machine will be blowin’ in wind. the generation and storage of electricity,” Proc R. Philos. Soc. Glasgow, pp. 1–2, May 1888. coupled with a multistage gearbox [12] “The windmill dynamo and electric light plant driven by aerodynamically controlled of Mr. Charles F. Brush, Cleveland, Ohio,” Sci. References Amer., vol. 63, no. 25, p. 389, Dec. 1890. [1] R. Carter, “Boat remains and maritime trade in wind turbines to give a fixed speed [13] P. O. Nissen, “The aerodynamic research on the Persian Gulf during the sixth and fifth millen- windmill sails of Poul la Cour, 1896–1900,” in Wind nia BC,” Antiquity, vol. 80, no. 307, pp. 52–63, Mar. system. In the 1970s, a major change Power for the World: The Rise of Modern Wind En- 2006. derived from the advancements in ergy, vol. 2, W. Palz, P. Maegaard, and A. Krenz, [2] M. Guarnieri, “When cars went electric—part Eds. Singapore: Pan Stanford, 2013, pp. 93–113. power electronics that allowed vari- 1,” IEEE Ind. Electron. Mag., vol. 5, no. 1, pp. [14] M. Guarnieri, “The beginning of electric ener- 61–62, Mar. 2011. able speed systems to be developed. gy transmission: Part two,” IEEE Ind. Electron. [3] A. G. Drachmann, “Heron’s windmill,” Centau- Mag., vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 52–59, June 2013. Two approaches have emerged: 1) rus, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 145–151, 1961. [15] D. R. Stein, “Pioneer in the North Sea: 1946 In- [4] R. L. Hills, Power from Wind: A History of Wind- a multistage gearbox with a doubly sel Neuwerk turbine,” IEEE Power Energy Mag., mill Technology. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge vol. 7, no. 5, pp. 62–68, 2009. fed induction generator coupled to a Univ. Press, 1996. [16] The 800 kVA BEST-Romani aerogenerator [5] J. C. Maxwell, “On governors,” Proc. R. Soc. small back-to-back power converter (wind turbine). (2013, Apr.). [Online]. Available: Lond., vol. 16, pp. 270–283, Mar. 1868. http://eolienne.cavey.org/index_en.php in the rotor circuit, and 2) a direct- [6] M. Guarnieri, “When cars went electric— [17] Tvindkraft—why the windmill was built. Part 2,” IEEE Ind. Electron. Mag., vol. 5, no. 2, drive low-speed synchronous machine (2017). [Online]. Available: http://www.tvin- pp. 46–53, June 2011. dkraft.dk/en/history/why-the-windmill-was- coupled to a fully rated power elec- [7] W. Thomson, “On the sources of energy in built.html nature available to man for the production of tronic converter. These architectures [18] G. L. Johnson. (2005, May). Wind energy systems. mechanical effect,” Science, vol. 2, no. 67, pp. [Online]. Available: https://wiki.duke.edu/ have resulted in much more versatile 475–478, Oct. 1881. download/attachments/13373206/ Johnson,_ [8] M. Guarnieri, “Switching the light: From chemi- wind generators that can provide the Wind_Energy_Systems.pdf cal to electrical,” IEEE Ind. Electron. Mag., vol. needed reactive power and frequency 9, no. 3, pp. 44–47, Sept 2015.

MARCH 2017 ■ IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE 83