Progress and recent trends in wind energy

Towards the end of 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, interest has risen in new and renewable energy (RE) sources especially wind energy for electricity generation. The scientists and researchers attempted to accelerate solutions for wind energy generation design parameters. Our life is directly related to energy and its consumption, and the issues of energy research are extremely important and highly sensitive. In a short time, wind energy is welcomed by society, industry and politics as a clean, practical, economical and environmentally friendly alternative. After the 1973 oil crisis, the RE sources started to appear in the agenda and hence the wind energy gained significant interest. As a result of extensive studies on this topic, wind energy has recently been applied in various industries, and it started to compete with other energy resources. In this paper, wind energy is reviewed and opened for further discussion. Wind energy history, wind-power meteorology, the energy-climate relations, wind-turbine technology, wind economy, wind-hybrid applications and the current status of installed wind energy capacity all over the world reviewed critically with further enhancements and new research trend direction suggestions. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.