Wind energy projects provide cost-effective and reliable energy in the United States and abroad. The U.S. wind industry currently generates about 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year that is enough to meet the annual electricity needs of 1 million people (http://www.awea.org,2002).
The actual origins of windmills are elusive, but humankind has been using wind for transportation since before recorded history. It has been claimed that the Chinese invented the windmill two centuries before the Common Era (B.C.E) in order to pump water from wells. The first recorded case of windmills was in the Middle East during the tenth century. Windmills were used to crush grains because of the lack of hydropower; wind was quicker and cheaper than processing grain by hand. By the twelfth century, the English, Dutch, and French had adapted the small windmills into larger more powerful windmills to suit their needs of crushing grain and pumping water. Because of the windmill, the Netherlands was one of the most industrialized in the world by the seventeenth century, exploiting the wind because of their limited mineral resources. Dutch settlers brought the windmill to America in the eighteenth century, primarily to the windy Northeast in cities like New York and Pennsylvania where they settled. Most of the windmills were used to transport water to dry areas and the processing of grains. In the 1890's the first modern windmill was designed to produce electricity, hundred of these new windmills dotted the landscape in Denmark by the turn of the twentieth century. Millions were erected as the American West was settled throughout the nineteenth century (Bergey,1990). Most of these windmills were built on farms and ranches for mechanical power. By the turn of the twentieth century, the search for power led several countries to attempt to tap wind as a source of "free" energy. For the first time comparatively large windmills were being constructed and tested.
