News & Articles on Wind Energy
This is an archive of articles and news on both large and small wind turbines, wind energy & the environment, and links to topics on the history of wind energy.
I’ve been working with wind energy since 1976 and my professional experience in the subject runs the gamut from wind resource assessment to installing and testing small wind turbines. I continue to follow the industry and analyze its growth and increasing contribution to renewable electricity generation worldwide.
For newcomers to wind energy I’ve added pages from my previous books explaining terms used in the industry.
- 200 Term Multilingual Lexicon: The lexicon translates English terms into five different languages: Dansk, Deutsch, Español, Français, and Italiano.
- Glossary of Wind Energy Terminology: The glossary was written by Paul Gipe and Bill Canter in the late-1990s. I’ve added the glossary to my web site for both its historical content—many of the terms were in use during the 1980s and 1990s—and as a reference for the thousands of newcomers to the wind industry since it was first published.
Call for warning systems after third sea eagle killed by wind turbine
By
Paul Gipe
Another sea eagle which had been fitted with a GPS tracking device as part of a monitoring programme has died after being hit by the blade of a wind turbine in Flevoland, nature journal Nature Today reports. Read more at DutchNews.nl:
Fun in the Sun: Bringing Sail Wings Back to Greece
By
Paul Gipe
I receive a fair amount of mail of the “What do you think of this” variety. Often it’s a quick push of the delete key and I am off about my business. Occasionally I’ve been known to go “Hmm” and forced to go a little further. A proposal by SAILWIND from the Hochschule für Technik, Wirtschaft und Gestaltung, Konstanz (the University of Applied Sciences, Constance) falls into the latter category.
When is a 1,250 kW Wind Turbine Only 1,000 kW? Setting the Smith-Putnam Record Straight
By
Paul Gipe
French colleague Philippe Bruyerre called my attention to an error I’ve been promulgating for at least four decades. He noted that I’d described the famed 1940’s era Smith-Putnam wind turbine as rated at 1,250 kW. It was not he wrote. It was really only a 1,000 kW wind turbine.
Another Long-Forgotten Wind Turbine–This Time on the Isle of Man
By
Paul Gipe
The research for an article on the history of early wind turbines took me down one fascinating rabbit hole after another. Previously, I mentioned Dimitri Stein and his Nordwind turbine on the Island of Neuwerk in the Wattensee. Another long-forgotten wind turbine I’d never heard of before was off the west coast of England on the Isle of Man.
Who Was Dimitri Stein and was He the First with Wind in Post War Germany?
By
Paul Gipe
While working on an article on the history of early wind turbines, I tumbled down a very deep rabbit hole. How was Dimitri Stein able to work on wind energy in Berlin during the height of World War II? This was post Kristallnacht, and Stein lived and worked right under the nose of the Third Reich.
Wind power risks becoming too cheap, says top turbine maker
By
The head of Siemens Gamesa warned on Wednesday that a decade-long race to bring down the cost of generating wind power could not continue, as it would reduce the financial muscle of turbine producers to continue investing in new technologies.
