ABSTRACT
Figure 2.1 Poul la Cour, the inventor of wind electricity. Throughout the 20th century up to the 1970s, there was nowhere a market for wind power electricity but many industrialised countries were busy developing ‘large’ wind power generators of tens of meters diameter. The first country to become serious about wind power utilisation was Denmark. Mobilised by the oil-price shock in 1973, the Danish government started promoting it. Private investment in wind turbines was subsidised and taxes on electricity produced from wind were waved. Turbines of those days had typically a 55 kW power rating. They were three-bladed and had grid-connected asynchronous generators.
