Forty Years of Wind Energy Development - Wind Power for the World: The Rise of Modern Wind Energy - page 16

Figure 2.1 Demonstration of a fast-running water-pumping wind turbine

developed by CWD, the Netherlands, manufactured and tested
by ECN, the Netherlands, at the Silsoe (agricultural) College,
UK (Photo: Jos Beurskens ©).

Wind and solar energy technology, however, developed
completely diferent from what I expected in the early days.
Actually we have seen a dual development track from the start:
decentralised applications, later extended to grid-connected wind
turbines, on the one hand and centralised grid-connected large-
scale wind farms on the other.
Even before the oil crisis, pioneers, both individuals and
small companies, developed small wind turbines with a generating
capacity approximately equal to the average electricity demand
of a household, farm or small enterprise.
In a way, these pioneers followed upon a craft which was
developed during the Second World War, when many people
built wind power generators for electricity supply as the regular
electricity supply was interrupted frequently. Some of the self-
made designs of the pioneers of the early 1970s made it to
the industrial phase. Examples are the Lagerwey turbine (the