Bloomberg: Ashlee Vance paid a recent visit to Iceland’s capital city of Reykjavik to see the next part of the green energy story. He found a start-up called Icewind that is building a new type of funky wind turbine designed to perform well in low-wind conditions but also to slow itself down in high-winds, preventing it from catching on fire or ripping apart.

Wikipedia: Historically the earliest known wind machine was made by the Persians and it was the panemone design, consisting of a wall, with slits, surrounding a vertical axle containing four to eight fabric sails. As the wind blew, the sails would turn the axle, which was in turn connected to grain grinders or some form of water transportation device (though little is known of the actual details of such methods) >>>