Windmill vs. Wind Turbine

Single, three-bladed windmill. On-shore.

My wife´s English is excellent. My language skills are certainly not among my strengths. I practised my English in a business environment, and my vocabulary is limited to business terms. We often use our different and sometimes conflicting abilities to complement each other and create our personal ‘fusion’. In this case my wife is the critical editor for my blog and helps me to make up for my writing deficits.

Two-bladed windmills in semi-synchronized arrangement.

We like to argue hard about words and meaning. Last case is ‘wind mill’ vs. ‘wind turbine’. From the Dutch coast onwards, the windmills of modern times accompany us along our drive. In the beginning we hardly notice them. Silently with slowly rotating blades, they watch us passing. 

Later on they try harder to catch our attention. Not as a single windmill but in groups, sometimes their blades rotate with the same speed and the same angle, just like ballet dancers. The next time more than 20 of them line up like the soldiers of a modern version of the terracotta army. Another time less disciplined, still in a straight row but with different colours. Typically they have 3 rotor blades. However, there is also an ethnic minority with two blades only.

The most impressive encounter was on a misty day when the towers of the silent giants were visible and only the tip of the lowest rotor blade cut through the clouds.

Military-style line-up of windmills. You can feel the discipline in the group.

When seeing such a giant from afar it looks gigantic but it is hard to estimate the actual size. When we passed trucks that were transporting rotor blades  we got a much better impression on their lengths. We estimated them about 30m. Curious as always I looked it up in Wikepedia. Modern rotor blades have a length between 65m (on-shore) and 85m (off-shore). Quite impressive.

I still like to call them ‘windmills’. Having grown up close to the Dutch border I still have memories of the old versions that were used for milling grain. I see the modern giants as their descendants that help us to harvest energy.

My wife does not agree with my view. For her milling requires grains or beans that are transformed into powder. The modern version of the windmill just rotates a turbine that produces electricity. Therefore, her verdict is clear: ‘wind turbine’.

Though I am the engineer in the family it seems that this time it is I who stick to a romantic view of a machine that mills the wind.