Jacobs Wind Electric Co. Inc.[1] is the oldest small wind turbine company in the United States. It has been designing consumer wind systems sized to the changing distributed electric loads of their periods since the mid 1920s.
The firm was started by Marcellus and Joseph Jacobs, after local interest in their wind electric system for their family’s Montana Ranch, built in 1922 [2], brought them requests from neighbors to provide them with wind generated electric power as well.
M.L. & Joe moved the firm to Minneapolis in 1931 to begin production of improved wind/engine distributed energy systems which were sold in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, as well as on every major continent, through a Dealer network that grew to over 300. Early Jacobs' machines included one taken to Antarctica by Richard Evelyn Byrd and installed (at Byrd's 'Little America') in 1933, running until 1955.[3] Before production ceased in the late 1950s, about 20,000 Jacobs Wind Energy Systems (1 - 3 kW) were shipped from Minneapolis.
In 1980 a new restart of production of Jacobs Wind Energy Systems began in Minneapolis, with marketing of larger 10 - 20 kW systems. Most of these 1,500+ wind systems produced from 1980-85 were grid connected. The majority of them went to pioneering windfarms in Hawaii and California.
In Minnesota, Jacobs units began being connected to Rural Electric Cooperative (REC) grids starting in 1981. Many of these systems are still on line to REC grids’ selling renewable wind power (AG-WATTS) in 2008.
Today, the firm’s designers (several now in their 4th decade in the wind industry) are working with local RECs on a new generation of consumer wind systems sized to ever larger consumer electric loads at distributed rural sites. Units producing over 20 kW have been under test & will enter the market later in 2008.