Environmental Engineering Reference
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drive-train clutching, and mechanical braking, but electrical braking was satisfactory. Most
importantly, the connection of the wind turbine's generator to the AC grid functioned well.
The second French machine, of a design called
Type Neyrpic
, had a smaller diameter
of 21 m. Its rated power was 132 kW at a wind speed of 13.5 m/s. Erected near the
English Channel at Saint-Remy-des-Landes, it operated successfully for three years and
accumulated only 60 days of outage for various technical reasons.
A larger Type Neyrpic turbine (Fig. 3-2) was built at the same site and operated for
seven months in 1963 and 1964. Its three-bladed rotor had a diameter of 35 m and its
maximum power was 1,085 kW. During November 1963 it produced 200,000 kWh of elec-
tricity. Its total energy output during a period of seven months was about 28 percent of the
wind energy available, which is a performance level seldom achieved even by modern
turbines. The tests ended in June 1964, when the turbine shaft broke. Although these three
prototype turbines clearly demonstrated the feasibility of grid-coupled operation, the French
decided in 1964 to discontinue further wind energy research.
Figure 3-2. France's 1.1-MW 35-m
Type Neyrpic turbine.
It was the largest
of three French prototypes tested during
the 1958-64 period. [Bonneille 1974]
Figure 3-3. The 100-kW John Brown
HAWT in the Orkney Islands.
Its 18-m
rotor was later reduced to 15 m. [Stodhart
1974]
United Kingdom
A variety of electricity-generating wind turbines was developed and tested in the U.K.
from 1948 to the early 1960's [Stodhart 1974]. The three largest of these were l00-kW
HAWTs of entirely different designs, each developed as a prototype for a wind power plant
connected to a utility grid. The irst of the prototypes (Fig. 3-3), designed and built by
John Brown & Co.
, was installed in the Orkney Islands in the early 1950's. It had a down-
wind rotor with three wood blades that were similar in design to helicopter blades. The
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