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Comment by spacebeer | Hacker News Reader

Haha, few weeks ago I was thinking if wooden wind turbines could become reality. Though I think blades could also be made of some wood composite

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> Though I think blades could also be made of some wood composite

They already are. They're balsa and fiberglass.

Are they really? I just assumed they were made of metal for some reason.

https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/01/30/the-wind-p...

They sure would be easier to recycle after their normal lifetime if they were!

Isn't a "wooden wind turbine" otherwise called a "windmill"? I think they've been around for a while. Not, admittedly, generating electricity.

I assume that windmills were called that because they were exclusively used for milling grain? (With the 'drive shaft' directly connected to a circular grindstone)

Medieval windmills were used for a variety of purposes, only some of them were milling grain. Many of them were related to grinding (ie grinding pigments and such), but there were also wind-powered sawmills and wind-powered water pumps for irrigation and water management. Many wind mills also had "power take off" equipment so they could for example use wind power to hoist heavy stuff to the first or second floors of the structure.