Growian
| Growian | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||
| location | |||
|
|||
| Coordinates | 53 ° 55 '38 " N , 8 ° 57' 0" E | ||
| country | Germany | ||
| Data | |||
| Type | Wind turbine | ||
| Primary energy | Wind energy | ||
| power | 3 megawatts | ||
| owner | Growian GmbH | ||
| operator | Growian GmbH | ||
| Project start | 1976 | ||
| Start of operations | 1983 | ||
| Shutdown | 1987 | ||
| turbine | two-winged leeward runner with a horizontal axis |
||
| Energy fed in per year | projected: 12 GWh | ||
The (often of ) Growian (also GROWIAN , Gro SSE Wi ndenergie on location) was a publicly funded wind turbine that technology for testing in the 1980s in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Koog with Marne was built. It was a two-bladed leeward rotor (rotor runs on the leeward side of the tower) with a hub height of around 100 meters.
Growian was for a long time the largest wind turbine in the world. Much of the system was new and not yet tested on this scale. Since the housing design was incorrect, the system could not be operated at full capacity. The problems with materials and construction did not allow continuous testing. Most of the time between the first test run on July 6, 1983 and the end of operation in August 1987, the plant was idle. The official start of operations was on October 4, 1983. The official start of the trial operation was given on October 17, 1983 at a ceremonial opening. In the course of 1987, operations and measurements were stopped. In the summer of 1988, Growian was demolished.
Technical specifications
The nominal electrical output of the Growian was 3,000 kW (3 MW), which was a world record at the time. The rotor had a pendulum hub and a diameter of 100.4 m. The two rotor blades were mechanically and electrically adjustable. They rotated at about 18.5 revolutions per minute. In contrast to most modern systems, the leaves ran behind the tower, i.e. on the leeward side .
The nacelle at a height of 100 meters weighed 340 tons, each of the two rotor blades 23 tons.
The cut-in wind speed was 5.4 m / s, the nominal wind speed was 12 m / s, the cut-off wind speed was 24 m / s and the survival wind speed was 60 m / s. The projected annual yield at an average wind speed of 9.3 m / s was around 12 GWh.
The rotor and asynchronous generator were mechanically coupled via a gear unit with a spur gear stage and two planetary gear stages.
The power supply to the power grid took place via a transformer set , which was largely identical to the transformer set later installed in the Neuhof substation , through which electrical energy could be obtained from the former GDR.
The rotor blades were made of steel spar. The load-bearing spar inside the profile cross-section was made of steel, the outer skin and ribs for reinforcement were made of fiberglass-reinforced plastic .
Project and results
At the end of 1976 the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology (BMFT) decided to examine the development of large wind power plants with research contracts and expert hearings. It stabbed the blocking large utility companies in the back due to public pressure . In the summer of 1977, orders were received by MAN , the Institute for Aerodynamics and Gas Dynamics at the University of Stuttgart and the University of Regensburg. In 1978, the BMFT decided to build the world's largest wind turbine with a tower height of 100 meters and a blade diameter of 100 meters. MAN was awarded the contract as the main designer, while the BMFT entrusted the reluctant HEW to lead the creation of a construction and operating company . Growian GmbH was founded on January 8, 1980 for the project, in which HEW held 46.7%, Schleswag 30.1% and RWE 23.2%.
.JPG)
The project management and technical management lay with HEW, the commercial management with Schleswag. In the underlying partnership agreement of January 3, it was stipulated that after the end of the project, the plant should be "likely to be demolished and scrapped" . The partners and to some extent also the BMFT operated the project with political motives. Günther Klätte, member of the board of RWE, said at a general meeting of the company: “We need Growian (large wind turbines) to prove that it is not possible” and said “ that Growian is something like an educational model to protect opponents of nuclear power To convert faith ”. The finance minister and former research minister Hans Matthöfer made a similar statement regarding the assumed financial difficulties: “ We know that it will not do us any good. But we're doing it to prove to proponents of wind energy that it can't be done. “After the plant was ridiculed by the Greens as the “ fig leaf ”of the electricity industry at the groundbreaking ceremony in May 1981 , RWE made internal efforts to publicly emphasize the line of openness towards alternative forms of energy and to curb public interest in wind energy.
Last but not least, the design as a two-bladed rotor, which worked as a leeward rotor on the leeward side of the tower, led to uncontrollable loads and material problems. The plant was largely a failure. Over the years, it had far more repair times than operating times and did not even achieve a permanent test run. When they were shut down, only 420 operating hours had accumulated.
The tower and one of the rotor blades are exhibited in the Sinsheim Technology Museum .
The Growian is considered to be one of the biggest failures in the history of wind energy use . The system could not meet the expectations placed on it in any way. The little knowledge gained found little use in wind turbine construction. However, a number of lessons have been learned from the conceptual mistakes made; B. that the approach of wanting to achieve a profitable plant size without intermediate steps was doomed to failure.
After the failure of the Growian project, it was partly concluded that wind turbines with a connected load of several MW were technically and economically not manageable. However, this conclusion was already questionable under the circumstances at that time (a plant with 1 to 2 MW had been in Denmark since 1975) and has since been overtaken by technical progress. Around 25 years after Growian was shut down, systems with the same dimensions and outputs (100 meters rotor diameter, 3 MW nominal output) were produced in large-scale production from the late 2000s. Since then, this turbine class has increasingly determined the market and continues the continuous increase in the average nominal output of newly installed wind turbines. In the offshore sector , significantly larger systems with up to 8 MW and rotor diameters of up to approx. 170 m are available as of 2015. Unlike the Growian, however, these types of systems were developed step by step from small types of systems with a few dozen to a few hundred kilowatts.
The Growian location will continue to be used for wind power generation. In 1988 the West Coast wind energy park was built on 20 hectares of the former test site as the first wind park in Germany with initially 30 smaller systems, each with an output of between 10 and 25 kW, supplied by three different manufacturers . After having been repowered twice and apart from a test field for small wind turbines, the wind farm now consists of four large systems with an individual output between 1 and 2 MW. At the location in Kaiser-Wilhelm-Koog, the operator offers interested visitors an information center on the history of wind energy use.
literature
- Matthias Heymann : The history of wind energy use 1890–1990 . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-593-35278-8 , p. 369–382 (in particular: The Growian Project , Chapter 7.3.3).
- Matthias Heymann: "The giant and the wind: On the difficult relationship between RWE and wind energy after 1945" , in: Helmut Maier (Ed.): Electricity industry between environment, technology and politics: Aspects from 100 years of RWE history 1898–1998, TU Bergakademie, Freiberg 1999, ISBN 3-86012-087-5 , pp. 217-236 (Chapter 3: The Growian disaster 1978-1987, pp. 228-235).
- Jörn Pulczinsky: Interorganizational innovation management. A critical analysis of the research project GROWIAN . Vauk, Kiel 1991, ISBN 3-8175-0121-8 (also dissertation at the University of Kiel 1991).
Web links
- The already historical wind energy converter "GROWIAN" - technical data of the Growian
- FAZ October 2013: Review - exactly 30 years ago the world's largest test facility, "Growian", went into operation
- n-tv on October 17th, 2013: A giant fails terribly
Individual evidence
- ↑ October 4, 1983: Wind power plant in operation , calendar sheet for October 4, Deutsche Welle
- ↑ Jürgen Hauschildt , Jörn Pulczynski: Growian: Target formation for significant innovation projects ( Memento from July 4, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) ( PDF file, 43 kB), in Klaus Brockhoff (Ed.): Management of Innovations. Planning and implementation - successes and failures , Gabler, Wiesbaden 1995, pp. 45–54
- ↑ Jürgen Brück: 20 years of West Coast wind energy park at energieportal24.de, September 6, 2007
- ^ Heymann: The Growian Project , 1995
- ↑ The Green Growiane , Die Welt No. 50, February 28, 1981, p. 9
- ↑ Anatol Johansen: Success for the world's first updraft power plant , Die Welt No. 289, December 13, 1982, p. 12
- ↑ Timeline for physics on the physics page by Bernhard Szallies, March 20, 2011
- ↑ The world's oldest large wind turbine celebrates its 40th birthday | windmesse.de. Retrieved June 28, 2020 .