Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
As early as during the war years 1942-1945, a leading industrial
group F. L. Smidth & Co., had built advanced aeromotors, and now
they were going to start afresh with analyses based on the most
recent technology, encouraged by many interested in wind power.
On 28 February 1974 leading Danish daily
Berlingske Tidende
reported on a large-scale windmill project, which would dominate
the debate for the rest of the year. F. L. Smidth & Co. obtained a
loan from the state in order to analyse the viability of developing
commercial windmills. But on the same day two persons publish
their critical arguments. Inventor Karl Krøjer bluffly announces
that, “windmills are just crazy. It is unrealistic thinking. If just a few
percent of the country's energy consumption should come from
windmills we should need so many of them that we would not be
able to see the country because of the steel skeletons with whirring
blades,” goes the vision of the inventor.
Neither does Steen Danø, managing director of Thrige-Titan,
then Denmark's heavyweighter in electrical machinery, perceive
any future for windmills. His expectations for the future are of
a completely diferent sort: “We should not just produce more
electricity for ever increasing consumption. That is not a solution.
We shall have to think afresh and look for a way of using the
raw materials in a better way.” Already the notion of resource
consciousness and low growth has crept in as an alternative to wind
energy.
In September 1974 F. L. Smidth & Co. presents their first result.
It originates with Jean Fischer, managing director, who had already
started to work on wind power long before the energy crisis.
He presents a model windmill with an elegant 130 m concrete
column with six built-in Darrieus rotors, a type which has always
been surrounded by much fascination. The size of the windmill is
unprecedented, 1 200 kW, and is predicted to become a tourist
attraction. Five hundred of these wind turbines, placed along the
Western coast of Jutland, could replace one nuclear power station.
Once more Steen Danø expresses his scepticism: “The danger
of the romantic attitude towards wind power is that in 25 years
from now we shall live on windmills and other funny projects and
have no electricity for the industry.” Mr Danø warns against the
windmill plans and suggests that an atomic power station should
be built in Funen. “We must get cracking and produce cheap
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