The Orkney Image Library
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1988 3MW WEG wind turbine in action. This was wind energy at the stage that wave and tidal are now and this was the grandad (or granny?) of all the turbines that have come since.
Picture added on 24 November 2009 at 09:43
Somewhere I have an old video I took of it going round on a rather grey winter day from really quite close .It was noisy !!
Added by Tim Wright on 24 November 2009
This should not be viewed as the "Grandad" of wind turbine construction. That title should go to the Danish Gedser turbine of 1957. When I visited Burgar hill in the mid 1990s these machines were already obsolete. Sadly the UK took a similar approach to wind power as the US, making over-engineered stuff like this. Why cut your teeth on a 3MW turbine? The Danes built stuff up from 100hm units and now we readily export their 3MW turbines to put around the UK. The Burgar Hill stuff was in no way repeatable economically, and whilst it gave us a lot of data it was still a bad move.
Added by Alan Bragg on 25 February 2011
It's interesting to come across this page accidentally. To me, "Grandad" or not isn't the issue and this 3MW twin-bladed WTG was the UK's largest wind turbine at the time (in the mid 80s) and a milestone in the history of development of wind power generation in the country. The machine was developed by British Aerospace/GEC/Taylor Woodrobe. I was working for Wimpey Laboratories at the time and we did the proof testing of the 60m rotors on behalf of British Aerospace that the rotors were structurally adequate and behaving as they were designed. I am still proud today as the signator of the test report that British Aerospace submitted to the DOE for approval.
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Added by Alex Tam on 04 June 2022
Evie
