ABSTRACT
The top countries for new wind power installation in 2016 were China, followed by Europe, the United States, Germany, India, Brazil and France. Europe’s wind power market remains robust—although new challenges are foreseen in the immediate future towards 2022, in particular in Germany, Europe’s market leader, to overcome new market constraints introduced by the auction system and the obligation to further improve technology and reduce cost. In 1887, James Blyth in Scotland built a windmill with sails that produced electricity for his cottage: the world’s first house lighted with wind power. The Dane Poul la Cour is considered the inventor of the modern type of wind power generator. A sign of the wind power’s current vitality is also the revival in R&D of old concepts that the world had almost forgotten. Vestas, the market leader, has built a “multi-rotor” machine as an R&D prototype.
