Brush's windmill dynamo

Charles F. Brush designed one of world's earliest electricity-generating windmills in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1887–1888.^[11] His engineering company built the "windmill dynamo" at his home. It operated from 1886 until 1900.^[10] The Brush wind turbine had a rotor 56 feet (17 m) in diameter and was mounted on a 60-foot (18 m) tower, making it similar in size to some of the first commercial wind farm turbines of the 1980s. However, the machine was only rated at 12 kW; it turned relatively slowly since it had 144 blades. Brush used the connected dynamo either to charge a bank of batteries or to operate up to 100 incandescent light bulbs, three arc lamps, and various motors in his laboratory. The machine fell into disuse after 1900 when electricity became available from Cleveland's central stations, and was abandoned in 1908.^[12]

NASA Lewis MOD series

From 1974 to 1981, NASA's Glenn Research Center (then the Lewis Research Center) in Brook Park, Ohio, led the U.S. Wind Energy Program for large horizontal-axis wind turbines, designing a series of 13 experimental large horizontal-axis wind turbines. In conjunction with the United States Department of Energy, NASA developed and tested megawatt-class wind turbines. The program's goal was to develop the technology, and then turn it over to private industry. While none of the program's wind turbine designs saw mass commercialization, the tests generated valuable data and pioneered modern design concepts such as tubular towers and computer control of blade pitch and rotor yaw.

Most of the MOD-series wind turbines went to sites outside of Ohio, but the first unit, the MOD-0 operated at NASA's Plum Brook facility near Sandusky from 1975 to 1988.^[13] Initially, the wind turbine had a lattice tower, a 38.1m diameter two-bladed rotor mounted downwind from the tower, and a capacity of 100 kW. Lockheed Corporation manufactured aluminum rotor blades. The discovery of severe stress resulting from the rotor blades passing through the tower's wind shadow led to several redesigns. In 1979, NASA rebuilt the MOD-0 with an upwind rotor mounted on a teetering hub, with a steel spar reinforcing the blades. In 1982, a tubular tower replaced the lattice tower. Finally, in 1985 NASA tested a single-bladed rotor with a teetering hub.^[13] In 1981, two NASA Glenn engineers, Larry Viterna and Bob Corrigan, used the adjustable-pitch blade feature of the MOD-0 to invent an analytical method for calculating wind turbine output in high winds, which has since become widely used in the wind power industry as the Viterna method.^[14][15]

• Model and display board of NASA MOD-0 experimental wind turbine
• Constructing the MOD-0 in 1975
• MOD-0, initial configuration, at Glenn Research Center's Plum Brook station near Sandusky, Ohio
• MOD-0, smoke test, downwind rotor configuration, 1982
• MOD-0 research wind turbine in one-bladed configuration

Wind Turbine Regulation

In 2014, the Ohio General Assembly passed HB 483. This codified a wind turbine setback of 1,125 feet (343 m) from the property line for significant wind farms.^[16] The change in wind turbine setbacks has discouraged investment of new wind farm development in the State of Ohio.^[17]

American Municipal Power Inc Wind Farm

The AMP Wind Farm located at the following coordinates:(41.379481°N 83.737707°W / 41.379481; -83.737707) west of Bowling Green in Wood County is Ohio's first utility-scale wind farm. It consists of four Vestas V80-1.8MW wind turbines giving a combined nameplate capacity of 7.2 MW.^[5][25] The first two units came online in 2003, and the second two in 2004, next to the Wood County landfill. In 2015 the wind turbines were paid off.^[26] Because the turbines are early models, the operators have had difficulty sourcing replacement parts.^[27] The US$10 million wind farm's wind turbines are highly visible for miles in all directions, and have become a tourist attraction, regularly hosting busloads of school children. A solar-powered kiosk on the site gives data to visitors about the project, the current wind speed, and real-time power generation.^[3]

• Vestas V80-1.8MW wind turbine outside Bowling Green, Ohio
• Entrance sign, south turbines
• Visitor area and information kiosk

Great Lakes Science Center

The Great Lakes Science Center installed a reconditioned Vestas V27-225 kW wind turbine in 2006, outside its museum building on Cleveland's North Coast Harbor between Cleveland Browns Stadium and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (41.506661°N 81.696769°W / 41.506661; -81.696769). The North Coast entertainment complex receives 1.5 million visitors per year, and the wind turbine appears regularly on local news broadcasts and Cleveland Browns NFL broadcasts, making it one of the world's most-viewed wind turbines.^[4]

The wind turbine originally operated on a wind farm in Denmark, which resold the wind turbine while repowering to newer, larger wind turbines.^[4][28] The ground around the wind turbine features an art display entitled Shadow and Light.^[29] The display includes walkways that align with the wind turbine's shadow at solar noon and two hours, eleven minutes after solar noon, respectively. On the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, the wind turbine's shadow also aligns with the walkways by length.^[29] Thus the wind turbine functions as a large gnomon in an incomplete sundial. The display includes boxes of light bulbs encased in concrete on one side of a plaza around the wind turbine's base, representing the amount of electricity consumed by the average American household in a year.

• Vestas V27 at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio
• Another view of the GLSC and its wind turbine
• Closeup photo of the wind turbine against the Cleveland skyline

One Energy Wind for Industry projects

This section contains content that is written like an advertisement. (July 2018)

Findlay, Ohio, based on-site distributed-generation wind energy company One Energy has developed and constructed nine Wind for Industry projects to date with three projects in construction as of October 2018. Wind for Industry describes wind energy projects in which utility-scale wind turbines are installed on-site and interconnected on a facility's side of their utility meter (a process known as distributed generation or behind-the-meter wind, which sometimes follows net metering^[30]). These projects are designed to achieve a significant reduction of an industrial facility's electrical consumption from the grid. One Energy's on-site generation list includes: