My historical journey into the deep recesses of wind energy took another odd twist yesterday. I was updating my bibliographic entry for a 1946 conference on wind energy in France when I stumbled over this tidbit about electric vehicles.[1]
For many in the wind community this may be doubly surprising. One, that there was a conference on wind energy in 1946, and, second, that it was held in France.
It shouldn’t be. There was great interest in wind energy during the immediate post war years. And French engineers were on a par with their British, Danish, German, and American colleagues. Many of the great names in aeronautics, such as Gustave Eiffel (yes, that Eiffel) and in wind energy, such as Louis Vadot were French. (See Everything You Need to Know about Wind Energy Was Written in 1957! about Vadot’s contribution to wind energy.)
The conference was held in the scenic fortified town of Carcassonne in the south of France. A public works engineer of the city, a Monsieur Seigné, told the conference that Carcassonne had a number of electric trucks and what with the rising cost of electricity; the city was considering the installation of one or more 100 kW wind turbines.
My thanks to Etienne Rogier, wind historian extraordinaire, for sending me a copy of the conference proceedings.
Monsieur Lanaud, also attending the conference, offered to help the city with a group of 12 kW wind turbines. He had demonstrated his variable-pitch, three-blade wind turbine using a rotor 6 meters (~20-feet) in diameter to drive a boat.
Of course events took a decidedly different turn. Abundant oil from the newly discovered fields in the Middle East flooded world markets, strangling wind energy in its cradle. And France went nuclear.
Just imagine what the present would look like if we hadn’t turned our back on electric vehicles and renewable energy in 1946.
[1] “Congrès du Vent Carcassonne 1946” (Congrès du Vent, l’Hotel de la Cite, Carcassone, France, 1946), 164 pages.
