Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
professionals could develop and manufacture wind turbines. Still
that did not get them anywhere.
Helge Petersen had been nominated as a consultant with Danish
Wind Technology, DWT (Dansk Vind Teknik, DVT), in Viborg, a new
industrial enterprise, where he was responsible for designing and
developing a range of various sizes of innovative wind turbines
for DWT. The defeated competitor from the Thisted Airport was
Petersen's favourite.
In 1981, the then energy minister Poul Nielson presented the
new company DWT in Nairobi in Kenya during a big international
energy conference together with powerful participants from big
industry, such as ASEA and Vølund. Together with the Danish state
each company owned one third of the shares. “Now the rest of you
in the wind energy sector can just go back to bed,” prophesied Mr
Nielson, powerfully seconded by his chief of section, Ove Dietrich.
They were convinced that they could design and manufacture
windmills that were better and cheaper.
The 15 kW DWT windmill shown in Nairobi got a blade damaged
after just a quarter of a rotation. René Karottki and I told a British
journalist covering daily news of the conference about the accident
and were told that we had done harm to vital national industrial
interests. Later on the windmill was donated to Kenya as an official
gift and erected near Lake Victoria. It never came to work as a
windmill, however, the tower made a good use as a waste water pipe
in a local fishing industry.
“All in all the new windmill giant, DWT, performed better in
public relations than in the making of windmills,” reported Ejvind
Beuse, engineer and folk high school teacher, in a critical portrait
in the journal
Vedvarende Energi
about another DWT windmill also
created by Helge Petersen.
The next version of the unusual prototype—the giant 265 kWh
windmill from Koldby—was erected next to the Nibe A and B 630 KW
windmills, the joint Danish government and central utility project.
The DWT wind turbine was almost a “freak” with its thick tower at
the bottom, and knitting needle thin upper part of the tower carrying
the nacelle and blades on top. With lack of proper proportions its
appearance was simply ugly.
New versions of that controversial style windmill would not
sell either, in spite of the strong industrial background. In the article
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