Page - 111 - in Clean Water Using Solar and Wind - Outside the Power Grid

© 2019 The Author. This is an Open Access book chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits copying and redistribution for non-commercial purposes with no derivatives, provided the original work is properly cited (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). This does not affect the rights licensed or assigned from any third party in this book. The chapter is from the book Clean Water Using Solar and Wind: Outside the Power Grid, Gustaf Olsson (Author). doi: 10.2166/9781780409443_0111 Chapter 9 Wind “First, there is the power of the Wind, constantly exerted over the globe… Here is an almost incalculable power at our disposal, yet how trifling the use we make of it! It only serves to turn a few mills, blow a few vessels across the ocean, and a few trivial ends besides. What a poor compliment do we pay to our indefatigable and energetic  servant!” Henry Thoreau, 1817–1862. The global installed capacity of wind is expected to continue its rapid growth. Over the five years up to 2022, the cost of wind projects is predicted to drop by 14% as the industry continues along the learning or experience curve (Lienhard et  al., 2016). It should be noted that wind power technology needed quite a long time before it took off commercially to become a significant part of total power generation. More than 93% of the investments in onshore wind from 1983 to 2014 occurred after the year 2000. As shown in Figure 3.6, the installed wind power capacity is negligible in African countries compared to Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/520710/wio9781780409443.pdf by IWA Publishing user