Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
This era of the wind power development came to an end, when
the 2 MW Esbjerg windmill in Tjæreborg Enge was grounded by
dynamite. The power utilities, the state and the EU had spent DKK
70 million (EUR 9.5 million) on it, 10 times of the cost of the Tvind
wind turbine. It was a monstrous amount, compared to the funding
at the disposal for developing the smaller wind turbines that crept
up into the MW-class during the 1990s, but were based on a quite
diferent design and philosophy of production.
7.9.2
Giants and Their Strategies
The only consolation and excuse for the lack of success of the
Danish state wind energy projects, was that the British Wind Energy
Group
(WEG) had similar experiences. They were backed too, by
the big corporations and had been pampered with almost all the
Britons' funding for wind energy R&D. Just like the DWT, the WEG
was unable, despite its impressive range of products, to obtain
just a modest bite of the lucrative Californian market in the mid-
1980s, in which otherwise anything that looked like a wind turbine,
could have been sold at soaring prices.
Figure 7.17
WEG wind turbine (Photo: Arne Jaeger).
It requires a more profound historical analysis why the big
funding, laboratories, well-paid researchers and goodwill from
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