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Considerable research on wind low patterns and wind characteristics was also
accomplished during this time by E. W. Golding and Arthur Stodhart. Golding describes
this work in one of the irst modern texts on wind power [Golding 1955, 1976], a topic
which continues to be a valuable reference for wind turbine engineers. Many aspects of
wind power generation are discussed by Golding, including wind characteristics, design
conigurations, ield testing, and economics. An example of the economic projections of
the time is shown in Figure 3-5.
United States
One person who had been impressed by the work of Putnam and the Grandpa's Knob
machine was Percy Thomas of the then U.S. Federal Power Commission. Thomas irmly
believed in the future of windpower and the need for it in this country. He wrote a series
of monographs on the subject from 1945 through 1954 [ e.g. Thomas 1946, 1949], stressing
the economics and requirements of size from a utility perspective. He also advocated
multiple rotors on a single tower (Fig. 3-6) as a method for obtaining multi-megawatt
capability within the constraints of current rotor blade technology. In the United States
Thomas was a lone voice “in the wind”, for he received no funds, even though there was
a Congressional hearing on the subject in 1951. No actual design work (much less experi-
mental work) was undertaken.
Figure 3-5. Early estimate of the rela-
tive costs of electricity from large- and
medium-scale wind turbines, as a func-
tion of the site's annual mean wind speed.
[Golding 1955, 1976]
Figure 3-6. Percy Thomas' dual-rotor
concept for a multi-megawatt wind
turbine. [Thomas 1949]
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