Danish Pioneering of Modern Wind Power - Wind Power for the World: The Rise of Modern Wind Energy - page 166

This was exactly the strategy of the Danish wind power pioneers
after the global oil crisis as illustrated in Table 6.1.

Table 6.1 Development of rated power for commercial Danish wind

turbines

Year 1978 1983 1985 1988 1991 1996 2001 2008

Typical
rated power
of new
turbines
(kW)

20-40 55-75 100-150 200-250 300-

450

500-
700

1000-
1500

2000-
3000

Note: The number ranges refer to the typical capacity range installed in a given year.

In contrast to this, most wind projects sponsored by government
in large industrial countries like the United States and Germany
focused on high capacity turbines in the MW range, often based
on experiences from especially production of helicopters. This
was not a success and illustrated that wind power technology
cannot be copied directly from other fields. In Denmark the electric
utilities were copying this focus on relatively large turbines in
their demonstration project with two 630 kW turbines (1979)
near the city of Nibe in northern Jutland. The Nibe turbines were
providing useful technological knowledge, but no commercial
interest was found in Denmark for following up on the concept of
the Nibe turbines (Fig. 6.2).

Figure 6.2 The Nibe wind turbines.