July 1955: The UK’s first grid-connected wind turbine

In 1955 The Engineer revisited Orkney to visit Costa Head, the UK’s first grid-connected turbine

There are currently 7,063 onshore wind turbines operating in 1,529 projects around Britain, with a combined operational capacity of 12GW. These figures come from RenewableUK, which estimates current offshore capacity at 7.1GW, a figure that will grow if new seabed rights are made available to offshore wind developers.

The wind turbines that define this form of renewable energy are getting bigger, too. In March, GE Renewable Energy unleashed the 12MW Haliade-X, a 260m-tall offshore turbine capable of generating enough energy for 16,000 European homes, rising to one million households in a 750MW configuration wind farm. Back onshore, the same company announced a 4.8MW wind turbine in September 2017 that is equipped with a 158m rotor and a range of tip heights up to 240m.

Electricity-generating wind turbines can be traced back to 1887 and James Blyth’s battery-charging machine, which was installed at the electrical engineer’s holiday home in Marykirk, Scotland. Nearly seven decades later, The Engineer received word from Costa Head, on the Orkney Mainland, about a 100kW wind-powered generator built by John Brown and Co (Clydebank) for the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board.