Environmental Engineering Reference
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technical influence on the further development of wind power in
Denmark.
Mechanical parts were of high quality; some were bought
second hand or constructed on site. The main shaft was found at a
ship graveyard in Rotterdam (it had been used as a propeller shaft
in an oil tanker), the 1 725 kW ASEA synchronous generator was
from 1954 and the gearbox with a weight of 20 tons, also produced
by ASEA in 1958, had never been used, but had served as a spare
unit in a Swedish copper mine. The most important technological
feature of the Tvind turbine was the self-supporting fibreglass
blades, which were based on the principles developed by Ulrich
Hütter at the Technical University in Stuttgart on a 100 kW wind
turbine in 1959. His blade design was characterised by the way in
which the blades were fastened around the hub bolts at the blade
root with glass fibre strands. This technology was introduced in
Denmark by Tvind and it became the “standard solution” for the
next generation of Danish wind turbines.
Figure 3.28
The main shaft for the Tvind turbine was originally used as
propeller shaft in an oil tanker. Here it is coupled to the 16 tons
welded rotor hub, produced at the site during the spring of
1977 (left); One of the finished 54 m blades is carried out of
the workshop tent—by many hands (Photos: Tvindkraft).
The Tvind people were innovative and courageous, but also
seeking the best technical solutions and searched for inspiration
and assistance from experts in Denmark and abroad. At one
single point, however, the inspiration from Hütter showed to be
problematic. Like NASA and others in the US and Germany, they
adopted his downwind layout with the rotor placed behind the
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