This is a guest post by Kris De Decker. It was previously published by Low-tech Magazine (a very interesting web magazine) and by Energy Bulletin.

In the 1930s and 1940s, decades after steam engines had made wind power obsolete, Dutch researchers obstinately kept improving the – already very sophisticated – traditional windmill. The results were spectacular, and there is no doubt that today an army of ecogeeks could improve them even further. Would it make sense to revive the industrial windmill and again convert kinetic energy directly into mechanical energy?

The Netherlands had 5 times more windmills in 1850 than it has wind turbines today.