Mario Alejandro Rosato is an electrical, electronic, and environmental engineer. He graduated in 1988 with a thesis on the construction of a low-cost small-sized wind turbine meant to supply electricity to rural schools in the Argentine Patagonia. In 1992 the first version of this book was published in Spain, which was much focused on self-construction of wind turbines in developing countries. In 2003 he won the John Hogg Award with a simple program, based on a spreadsheet, for the design of wind turbines meant for alternative marine propulsion. In 2010, the renewed interest of the Italian public opinion on small-sized wind turbines led him to start teaching about the subject at the University Consortium of Pordenone and other private institutes. In 2012 he was engaged by Acca Software, the Italian leader in software and technical training for engineers, to record a video course on how to select commercial wind turbines and design the whole system. In 2014, with the help of his wife Giovanna, he decided to translate the original book into Italian but, given the technological evolution in nearly one quarter of century, he finally decided to write a completely new book from a scratch.

The current edition is a not a mere translation to English of the Italian one. The Author included an additional chapter and further improvements of the pre-existing ones, and has adapted the content to meet the different needs of people living both in industrialized and in developing countries. The formulas and design method are presented together with some hints on how to implement them in standard spreadsheets without the need to resort to expensive simulation software.