page_title: History of wind power
section_title: Utility-scale turbines
hierarchical_section_title: History of wind power / 20th century / 1900–1973 / Utility-scale turbines
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Eolienne de Nogent-le-Roi (France) English: Wind turbine in Nogent-le-Roi (France)
context_page_description: Wind power has been used as long as humans have put sails into the wind. For more than two millennia wind-powered machines have ground grain and pumped water. Wind power was widely available and not confined to the banks of fast-flowing streams, or later, requiring sources of fuel. Wind-powered pumps drained the polders of the Netherlands, and in arid regions such as the American mid-west or the Australian outback, wind pumps provided water for livestock and steam engines.
  With the development of electric power, wind power found new applications in lighting buildings remote from centrally-generated power. Throughout the 20th century parallel paths developed small wind plants suitable for farms or residences, and larger utility-scale wind generators that could be connected to electricity grids for remote use of power. Today wind-powered generators operate in every size range between tiny plants for battery charging at isolated residences, up to near-gigawatt sized offshore wind farms that provide electricity to national electrical networks.
  By 2014, over 240,000 commercial-sized wind turbines were operating in the world, producing 4% of the world's electricity.
context_section_description: A forerunner of modern horizontal-axis utility-scale wind generators was the WIME D-30 in service in Balaklava, near Yalta, USSR from 1931 until 1942. This was a 100 kW generator on a 30 m (100 ft) tower, connected to the local 6.3 kV distribution system. It had a three-bladed 30 metre rotor on a steel lattice tower.  It was reported to have an annual load factor of 32 per cent, not much different from current wind machines.
  In 1941 the world's first megawatt-size wind turbine was connected to the local electrical distribution system on the mountain known as Grandpa's Knob in Castleton, Vermont, United States. It was designed by Palmer Cosslett Putnam and manufactured by the S. Morgan Smith Company.  This 1.25 MW Smith–Putnam turbine operated for 1100 hours before a blade failed at a known weak point, which had not been reinforced due to war-time material shortages. No similar-sized unit was to repeat this "bold experiment" for about forty years.
caption: Experimental wind turbine at Nogent-le-Roi, France, 1955.
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