When it comes to harnessing the power of the wind, we probably first think of wind turbines spinning on mountains or offshore. In fact, the use of wind energy has a history of thousands of years. Before the invention of the steam engine, wind energy was used as an important power for ship navigation, drinking water and irrigation, drainage, grinding surface and sawing wood, etc. However, with the large-scale exploitation of coal, oil and natural gas and the availability of cheap electricity, all kinds of wind machinery, which had been widely used, were gradually phased out because of high cost, low efficiency and inconvenient use, which could not compete with steam engines, internal combustion engines and electric motors.
China is one of the first countries to use sailing ships and windmills. For centuries before Christ, our ancestors used wind power to lift water, irrigate, grind surfaces and hull rice to propel ships forward. In Tang Dynasty, there is a poem "riding the wind and waves will sometimes, straight hanging cloud sail to help the sea", which shows that wind sailing has been widely used in river navigation at that time. The Song Dynasty is the heyday of windmill application in China, when the popular vertical axis windmill, has been in use today. The most brilliant sailing era is the Ming Dynasty, Chinese navigator Zheng He seven voyages to the western seas, the huge sailing fleet played an indispensable role.
Abroad, in the 2nd century BC, the ancient Persians used vertical axis windmills to grind rice. In the 10th century, Islamic people used windmills to carry water. In the 11th century, windmills were widely used in the Middle East. The windmill spread to Europe in the 13th century and became an indispensable prime mover in Europe in the 14th century. In Holland, windmills were used first to draw water from the lakes and lowlands of the Rhine Delta, and later to extract oil and saw wood. By the end of the 19th century, the Danes were the first to develop wind turbines. Wind power generation plays an important role in solving the problem of electricity consumption for the residents in the non-electric farming and pastoral areas.
For a long time, the development of wind energy utilization technology is quite slow, and human beings do not pay enough attention to it. However, since the world oil crisis in 1973, under the double pressure of the urgent conventional energy and the deterioration of the global ecological environment, wind energy as a part of new energy has made great progress, and many large and medium-sized wind farms have been established in different regions of the world. It is expected that by the middle of the 21st century, wind energy will become one of the pillars of the world's energy supply and the main power source for the sustainable development of human society.