Later, new ways to use wind energy emerged and spread to virtually all regions of the world. In the late 1800s small wind-electric generators began to be widely used in areas where access to electricity was scarce. These were some of the first iterations of the modern wind turbines that are used to generate large amounts of electricity today. Spurred on by the infamous oil shortages of the 1970s, wind turbines became an increasingly popular way to produce electricity as the world sought alternative energy sources. In the U.S., the federal government funded research and development of large wind turbines, and in the early 1980s thousands of these wind turbines were installed in the state of California.
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