Why Did People *Stop* Building WIndmills?

Question

And when? They're free energy so why did people stop building them?

Answer 1

Oil is "Free" too. But actually using it is not. Then you have to pay for plant, capital and labour. Small, distributed systems are not economic (or at least never have been in the past). Windmills are still in use where it is not economic to connect to the power grid. Here, the cost of the power wires with poles and transformers would far exceed the total power required. But usually, it is cheaper to move the industry closer to the source of power.

Answer 2

wind power is NOT FREE!

they stopped using wind power when electric got easier to access.

Answer 3

When did people stop?

This is a huge industry.  Denmark, Germany and Holland lead the way.  It isn't viable everywhere though... you do need consistent wind.

Answer 4

People stopped because of oil. Oil was deemed to have more potential.

As some of the other answerers have said, it is not free, but considering how the cost of fossil energy has risen, wind generated electricity is already cost competitive. Fossil based energy costs between 6 - 12 cents / kWh, while wind based (rectified) electricity costs roughly 8 cents / kWh for a 15 mph wind. Note that this is based on wind turbine technology, not wind mills.

The costs associated with any renewable energy endeavor is the capital costs and maintenance costs. In the case of wind, there is extra cost to rectify the electrical output for consistency of amplitude and frequency.

An alternative means of storing the energy is using hydrogen. Instead of electricity being the final product, you use that electricity to electrolyze water and produce hydrogen which can be used in fuel cells. There are many who believe that this is how we will do energy in the year 2050.

Answer 5

It was a question of need.

Windmills were used specifically to do field work like grinding grain....  driving pumps to move water....  As towns and villages grew grinding grain was done by larger water wheels and vast irrigation systems replaced windmills.  Here in Maryland there are the remains of windmills used years ago to pump well water...  today electric pumps can do a better job.

The future of windmills today is to drive electric generators now that federal legislation requires electric utilities to buy back any electricity produced by a customer.

Answer 6

It isn't free.

Building and maintaining a windmill is likely more expensive than just getting power off the grid.

Additionally, windmill power is less consistent. For example, you get periods of high wind (high power) and low/no winds (low power). If you get periods of no wind, then you also need a battery to store energy in between those periods. Batteries must be maintained and occasionally replaced etc...

It's just not economic to use wind power (or hasn't been), hopefully we'll continue to see more and more people going back to them for the environments sake though.