Although several books and articles have been written on specific aspects of the history of wind power, none of them provides a comprehensive technology, policy and market overview. In particular, no book has been written that covers the last 20 years, the two most important decades in the history of wind power. Further, no single book spans the entire global history of wind power, while weaving together both the historical context and the technical details of wind turbine evolution. This book will span the entire history of wind power (1888-2013) and provide balanced coverage to each era as well as the wind power technology advances that occurred during that time. This book will also provide historical context for wind power developments and it will explain the evolution of wind turbine technology in an easy-to-understand manner. The key to this book is that it will discuss the policy, technology and market evolution of wind power in commonly understood language.
This book will also introduce and examine broad themes such as government funding of wind power, the role of fossil fuels in wind power development and the importance of the individual entrepreneur in wind power development. Finally, this book will discuss the lessons learned from wind power technology development and make them relevant to the understanding of wind power today. In this manner, the individual chapters will be pulled together though a common discussion of the technology development lessons learned in each chapter.
