INTRODUCTION

For human development to continue, we will ultimately need to find sources of

renewable or virtually inexhaustible energy. Its difficult to imagine this, but even if we find

several hundreds or even thousand years of coal 7 natural gas supplies, what will humans do for

the next 250,000 years or so after they are depleted? Even the most apparently "Inexhaustible"

sources like fusion involve the generation of large amounts of waste heat-enough to place

damaging stress on even a robust ecosystem like earths, at least for the organisms that depend

upon stability of the system to survive.

One of the areas that suffer because of this back thinking is the developmentof

renewable energy sources - and the topic of this section; Wind Energy Conversion.

Wind energy conversion is a fascinating field to study, if only because its past has been so

checked & it's exact future is so uncertain. Unlike the aerospace industry, the computer industry,

& almost any other successful industry we can name, Wind energy- the leading mechanically

based renewable energy for much ofman's history - has never made anyone rich for long. But

unlike many of these otherindustries, it has been around for thousands of years. It's a technology

that has been reinvented numerous times. We are left with the promise & the drive to

succeeddespite daunting (Sometimes puzzling) Obstacles.