The History Of Solar And Wind Power Is A Very Long One

The history of solar and wind power stretches back thousands of years. Wind power has been around ever since humans have been using sails. The very first instance of a machine driven by wind was invented by a Greek engineer named Heron. For a long time windmills were the most widespread examples of using wind power. The very first windmills made an appearance in a region of Iran somewhere between the 7th and 9th centuries, and they appeared in Europe in the 12th century.

The first windmill to generate electricity was made in Scotland by James Blyth in 1887. Nonetheless, it was not thought to be economically practical and as such it was not widely developed. Denmark took hold of the baton and focused on improving the technology. In 1978 a cutting edge multi-megawatt turbine was built.

After this, the US government worked with business leaders to further develop this technology. This brought about a lot of features available currently like variable speed generators. In recent years the wind power industry has expanded greatly, due to worries over the depletion of fossil fuels.

The history of solar and wind power are similar as both can be traced to distant civilizations. Greeks and Native Americans both built homes into the sides of hills in order to benefit from the heat. Romans used glass to trap the warmth of the sun in their houses. Nevertheless, despite this lengthy history the very first solar collector wasn't built until 1776, by Horace de Saussere. Around a century later Auguste Mouchout created a solar driven steam engine. This was extremely costly and no more were made. Twenty years later the very first solar cells were built.

Despite this leap it took until the 1950's for big advances to be taken, as solar power was utilized in the mainstream for the first time. It was nonetheless less expensive to use oil to power homes, so it took until the oil embargo of the 1980's to allow solar energy to come to the fore. Its popularity has gradually increased since then, and during the 1990's over one million homes had some form of solar energy installed.

Solar and wind power has been utilized throughout human history. Ever since the early discoveries of the Greeks and Romans, humans have been developing and advancing the technology. Now that we are conscious of the problems with non-renewable fossil fuels, much research money is used on finding alternative energy sources. Nature provides us with a great deal of energy, so by studying the history of solar and wind power industry experts can improve the potential to harness it effectively.

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