Renewable Energy Success Stories

Renewable Energy History – The Last Century

The U.S. has a long history of using wind energy. By 1889, about 77 windmill factories were scattered across the country, employing 1,100 workers. They sold water-pumping windmills to railroads (who needed water for their steam locomotives) and farmers (to pump water for their animals).26 In the 1930s and 1940s, hundreds of thousands of electricity-producing wind turbines were built in the U.S. Just like wind turbines today, they had two or three thin blades, which rotated at high speeds to drive electrical generators. These wind turbines provided electricity to farms beyond the reach of power lines and were typically used to charge storage batteries, operate radios and power a few lights.

Before pipelines for natural gas were put in, heating water with the sun was quite common in the U.S. From 1920 to 1950, an industry for solar hot water heaters served about 50,000 homes in just South Florida. In 1979, with doubts about our oil supplies from overseas, 50,000 solar hot water heaters were sold and installed around the U.S. One hundred thousand units were sold in 1984.27 Michigan’s installation of solar energy systems placed it sixth in the country. Solar hot water heaters are quite popular in Japan, where more than 10 million systems are in operation and sales of 250,000 each year continue. Solar hot water systems are even more common in Israel, where 90% of the homes use the sun to heat their water.28

 

 

26 Asmus, Peter, Reaping the Wind. How Mechanical Wizards, Visionaries, and Profiteers Helped Shape Our Energy Future, Island Press, Washington, D.C., ©2001, page 31.

27 U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, kid’s page: http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/milestones/solarwater.html, (8-Feb-2003).

28 The California Solar Center, http://www.californiasolarcenter.org/history_solarthermal.html (the space is an underline), (8-Feb-2003).Information provided by: John Perlin, the author of From Space to Earth - The Story of Solar Electricity, and co-author [with Ken Butti] A Golden Thread - 2500 years of Solar Architecture and Technology