ABSTRACT
Global power capacity of modern wind turbines for electricity production evolved from 18 GW of global capacity in 2000 to some 600 GW in 2018. Only some 20 GW in total are offshore. Windmills had been used for water pumping and grain grinding. Only towards the 1890s, the time when the first electric power plants were built by Edison, it was also time for the first wind power turbines to emerge. The Dane Poul la Cour is considered the inventor of the modern type of wind power generator. He built his first turbine in 1891. 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. Against the market trend, where all rotors employ three-bladed rotors, Dutch company 2-B Energy has developed the prototype of a “two-blader” that runs successfully since 2015.
