Growian
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Growian or GROWIAN (short for German "Große Windenergieanlage" - "Large wind turbine") was a publicly funded
wind turbine A wind turbine is a device that wind power, converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. , hundreds of thousands of list of most powerful wind turbines, large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, were generating over ...
built in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Koog near
Marne Marne can refer to: Places France *Marne (river), a tributary of the Seine *Marne (department), a département in northeastern France named after the river * La Marne, a commune in western France *Marne, a legislative constituency (France) Nethe ...
for purposes of technology testing in the 1980s. It was a two-bladed "lee runner" (the rotor was situated on the downwind side of the tower) with a hub height of about . For a long time Growian was the world's largest wind turbine. Many features of the installation were novel and had not previously been trialled at this scale. Due to manufacturing faults in the casing, the turbine could not be run at full performance, and various issues with materials and construction prevented continuous testing. Consequently, the installation was idle for the greater part of the period between the first test run on 6 July 1983 (official start of operations was 4 October 1983) and end of operations in August 1987. Growian was decommissioned over the course of 1987, and dismantled in summer 1988.


Technical data

left, GROWIAN with its two wind gauge pylons Growian's power rating was 3,000 kW, at the time the highest in the world. The rotor had an oscillating nave, a diameter of , and revolved at approximately 19.5 rpm. The orientation of the two blades was regulated by a mechanical-electrical mechanism. In contrast to most modern turbines, the blades rotated on the
leeward In geography and seamanship, windward () and leeward () are directions relative to the wind. Windward is ''upwind'' from the point of reference, i.e., towards the direction from which the wind is coming; leeward is ''downwind'' from the point o ...
side of the tower. The turbine house at a height of weighed 340 t, and each blade weighed 23 t. The turbine had a switching on speed of and a rated speed of . It would cut out at a speed of and was rated for a maximum survivable speed of . Projected annual energy yield at a mean wind speed of was approximately 12 GWh. Rotor and
induction generator An induction generator (or asynchronous generator) is a type of alternating current (AC) electrical generator that uses the principles of induction motors to produce electric power. Induction generators operate by mechanically turning their roto ...
were mechanically coupled by a gearing mechanism consisting of one
spur gear Spur gears or straight-cut gears are the simplest type of gear. They consist of a cylinder or disk with teeth projecting radially. Viewing the gear at 90 degrees from the shaft length (side on) the tooth faces are straight and aligned parallel to ...
and two
epicyclic gear An epicyclic gear train (also known as a planetary gearset) is a gear reduction assembly consisting of two gears mounted so that the center of one gear (the "planet") revolves around the center of the other (the "sun"). A carrier connects the ...
s. Feed-in to the power grid was realized using a set of
motor–generator A motor–generator (an MG set) is a device for converting electrical power to another form. Motor–generator sets are used to convert frequency, voltage, or phase of power. They may also be used to isolate electrical loads from the elect ...
s that was largely identical to that later used at , one of the few electrical substations that allowed for electricity import from the
GDR East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from its formation on 7 October 1949 until its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on 3 October 1990. Until 1989, it was generally vie ...
. The rotors were constructed using steel walers, and in cross section consisted of a steel core, an outer skin and
fibreglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass ( Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass c ...
reinforcement rods. The tower and one of the rotors are on display at the Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim. The total cost of the installation was about 87 million
Deutsche Mark The Deutsche Mark (; "German mark (currency), mark"), abbreviated "DM" or "D-Mark" (), was the official currency of West Germany from 1948 until 1990 and later of unified Germany from 1990 until the adoption of the euro in 2002. In English, it ...
.


Development and outcomes

file:Auto- und Technik Museum Sinsheim (cropped).JPG, left, Growian rotor blade with museum logo at Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim Towards the end of 1976, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Germany), Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMFT) decided to use research contracts and expert consultation to investigate the development of large wind turbines. This decision, taken as a result of public pressure, ran contrary to the stalling efforts of the major energy providers. Contracts were awarded to
MAN SE MAN SE (abbreviation of ''Maschinenfabrik Augsburg- Nürnberg'', ) was a manufacturing and engineering company based in Munich, Germany. Its primary output was commercial vehicles and diesel engines through its MAN Truck & Bus and MAN Latin ...
, the Institute for Aerodynamics and Gas Dynamics at the
University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart () is a research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany with programs in civil, mechanical, ind ...
, and the
University of Regensburg The University of Regensburg () is a public research university located in the city of Regensburg, Germany. The university was founded on 18 July 1962 by the Landtag of Bavaria as the fourth full-fledged university in Bavaria. Following groundbr ...
. In 1978 the BMFT decided to construct the world's largest wind turbine with a tower height and blade diameter of 100 m. MAN SE was chosen as main contractor, and the formation of a construction and operation company was given into the charge of the reluctant (HEW). This led to the formation of the Growian
GmbH (; ) is a type of Juridical person, legal entity in German-speaking countries. It is equivalent to a (Sàrl) in the Romandy, French-speaking region of Switzerland and to a (Sagl) in the Ticino, Italian-speaking region of Switzerland. It is a ...
on 8 January 1980, of which HEW held 46.7%, held 30.1%, and
RWE RWE AG is a German multinational energy company headquartered in Essen. It generates and trades electricity in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and the United States. In July 2020, RWE completed a far-reaching asset swap deal with E.ON first ...
held 23.2%. Overall and technical direction were the responsibility of HEW, while Schleswag dealt with commercial management. The basic contract between the partners of 3 January 1978 stipulated that after the project's conclusion, the installation was "anticipated to be dismantled and scrapped". The partners as well as the BMFT also had political motives connected with the project. Günther Klätte, management board member of RWE, stated during a general business meeting: "We require Growian 'in the general sense of large wind turbines''as a proof of failure of concept", and he noted that "the Growian is a kind of pedagogical tool to convert the anti-nuclear energy crowd to the true faith". A similar statement regarding the incurred financial burdens was reported of Minister of Finance and former Minister of Research
Hans Matthöfer Hans Hermann Matthöfer (25 September 1925 – 14 November 2009) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Between 1974 and 1978 Matthöfer served as secretary of research and technology. In 1978 he took over as federal mini ...
: "We know it won't do anything for us. But we do it to demonstrate to the wind energy advocates that it doesn't work." After the Green Party had derided the installation as the electricity provider's "fig leaf" on the occasion of groundbreaking in May 1981, the RWE took internal measures to make sure that publicly a position of open-mindedness towards alternative energy production was emphasized while public interest in wind energy was allayed. Insuperable structural load and material problems occurred, not least due to the two-bladed lee runner configuration. The installation turned out to be a failure in most respects, spent substantially more time under repair than up and running, and was not even capable of sustained test operation. When it was decommissioned it had only logged a total of 420 hours in active operation. Growian is regarded as one of the largest failures in the
history of wind power Wind power has been used as long as humans have put sailing ships, sails into the wind. Wind-powered machines used to grind grain and pump water — the windmill and wind pump — were developed in what is now Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan by ...
and was unable to fulfill any of the expectations riding on its conception. What few insights were gained found little application in wind turbine construction. Some lessons were however learned from conceptional mistakes made in its construction, e.g., the futility of trying to reach profitable installation sizes without taking intermediate steps. The point of view that multi-MW-yield wind turbines were technically and commercially infeasible gained some currency after the failure of the project, but was eventually superseded by technical progress. Beginning with the late 2000s, twenty-five years after Growian was decommissioned, installations with identical dimensions and yield (100 m rotor diameter, 3 MW net yield) were being produced in large numbers, a class of turbines that has continued to dominate the market and to push forward the mean net yield of newly installed turbines. As of 2015, substantially larger installations with yields up to 8 MW and rotor diameters of up to 170 m are present in the offshore sector. In contrast to Growian, however, these turbine types were incrementally developed from smaller installations in the 0.1 MW range. Growian's former locations is still being used for wind power generation. In 1988, Germany's first
wind farm A wind farm, also called a wind park or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turbines covering an exten ...
, the , was built on a 20 hectare section of the former test area. It initially comprised 30 smaller turbines with net yields of 10-25 kW, provided by three different
wind turbine manufacturers Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few ...
. After being repowered twice, the wind farm today consists of four major installations with 1-2 MW yield, in addition to a test area for
small wind turbine Small wind turbines, also known as micro wind turbines or urban wind turbines, are wind turbines that generate electricity for Microgeneration, small-scale use. These turbines are typically smaller than those found in wind farms. Small wind tur ...
s and an information center presenting the history of wind power.


References

* * {{Authority control Wind farms in Germany Wind power in Germany Wind turbines