EWEA Blog - A walk among the clouds -- EWEA visits a wind farm

On a recent late-October morning, EWEA staff set off early from our
offices in Brussels to visit a wind farm. For many of us, it would the
first time to get so close to the energy-producing giants that we spend
our time promoting. The sun rose and we were confronted with a thick
blanket of fog, which did not lift during the two hour drive to the
Europarc, near Aachen in Germany. Not the best weather for viewing wind
turbines. But we persevered.

Descending from the bus at the Europarc in Vetschau, we suddenly found
ourselves at the base of a gigantic turbine, a 1.5 MW Enercon machine
with a 66 metre rotor diameter. The blades were spinning silently in the
breeze, shrouded by fog. This was an unusual turbine, specially designed
for visiting, with a viewing platform on top and a safety ladder on the
outside, allowing space for groups to climb the 65 metres to the top on
a staircase inside. Within the turbine there were several floor levels
off the stairs, for catching your breath on the 300 steps and listening
to explanations on the construction of the turbine by our knowledgeable
guide, Pieter De Greef from Windvision. The turbine is the same weight
as 30 African elephants!

Once we had a warming coffee and collected our safety kits, including
oxygen masks, we made our way to the top of the turbine. Pictures of all
the happy looking people who have ever visited adorn the inside of the
turbine -- thousands have done so. Once we got to the viewing platform
the fog was thick, but we made out the blades spinning through the
greyness and felt the force of the wind at this height. On ascending the
narrow ladder into the nacelle, where the engines are, we gained a true
understanding of how the turbine produces energy -- and the difficulty
for the engineers working in such confined spaces. Not only do the
blades spin the rotor, but the entire nacelle turns to face the
direction of the wind.

Inside the nacelle was a display, showing live information on the
performance of the turbine, such as energy being produced and wind
speed. When we visited, the display showed that 3,682,4099 Kw hours of
energy had been produced by that turbine alone. Calculations were
quickly made, and we worked out that if the average house uses 4500kw
hours per year, this turbine had produced 10 million times that in its
lifetime.

This is part of a nine turbine wind farm in Vetschau. The first turbine
was constructed in 1997, the other eight between 1999 and 2002. To visit
the turbine yourself, contact Windvision here (in German).

For more information on this article or if you would like to know more
about what www.windfair.net can offer, please do not hesitate to contact
Trevor Sievert at ts@windfair.net