The Wind Power Story IEEE Press 445 Hoes Lane Piscataway, NJ 08854

The Wind Power Story IEEE Press 445 Hoes Lane Piscataway, NJ 08854 IEEE Press Editorial Board Ekram Hossain, Editor in Chief Giancarlo Fortino Andreas Molisch Diomidis Spinellis David Alan Grier Saeid Nahavandi Elya B. Joffe Donald Heirman Ray Perez Sarah Spurgeon Xiaoou Li Jeffrey Reed Ahmet Murat Tekalp The Wind Power Story A Century of Innovation that Reshaped the Global Energy Landscape Brandon N. Owens © 2019 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. All rights reserved. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada. 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Kozak Set in 10/12pt Warnock by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Colleen, Lauren, Cameron, and Logan vii Contents Preface xi 1 The Wind Power Pioneers 1 1.1 Work of the Devil 1 1.2 The Danish Edison 7 1.3 The War of the Currents 12 1.4 The Colorado Connection 14 Notes 16 Bibliography 17 2 The Age of Small Wind 19 2.1 Networks of Power 19 2.2 An Interesting Twist 22 2.3 The Savior of the Windmills 25 2.4 From the Arctic to Antarctica 27 2.5 Rural Electrification 32 Notes 33 Bibliography 34 3 The Birth of Big Wind 37 3.1 The High Altitude Turbogenerator 37 3.2 The Soviets Advance 42 3.3 Victory 46 Notes 48 Bibliography 49 4 Wind Power’s Giant Leap 53 4.1 The Winds of Cape Cod 53 4.2 Grandpa’s Knob 58 4.3 A Dream Realized 60 viii Contents 4.4 A Lesson in Economics 63 Notes 65 Bibliography 65 5 Wind Power in the Wake of War 67 5.1 The Wind Power Aerogenerator 67 5.2 The Search for Tomorrow 72 5.3 The British Experiments 73 5.4 The Wind Power Schism 77 Notes 79 Bibliography 80 6 Wind Power’s Invisible Solution 83 6.1 The Death of Windmills 83 6.2 The Return of Johannes Juul 88 6.3 Learning to Stall 91 6.4 Gedser Economics 95 Notes 97 Bibliography 98 7 The French Connection 101 7.1 The Duke’s Invention 101 7.2 The Seeker 106 7.3 The Neyrpic Wind Turbines 110 Notes 111 Bibliography 112 8 Germany’s Timeless Beauty 115 8.1 Wind Power in Wartime 115 8.2 Lighting Neuwerk Island 117 8.3 The Aesthete 119 8.4 The Blade Breakthrough 122 Notes 127 Bibliography 128 9 Wind Power’s Silent Decade 129 9.1 The Pope’s Speech 129 9.2 Silent Spring 134 9.3 The Gathering Storm 138 Notes 139 Bibliography 140 Contents ix 10 America’s Next Moonshot 143 10.1 The Energy Crisis 143 10.2 Back to Ohio 148 10.3 The Turning Point 152 Notes 155 Bibliography 155 11 Denmark Reinvents Wind Power 159 11.1 Feared to Freeze 159 11.2 More Than a Carpenter 162 11.3 Let 100 Windmills Bloom 166 11.4 From Blacksmiths to Businessmen 168 Notes 171 Bibliography 172 12 The Wind King 175 12.1 Heronemus’s Dream 175 12.2 California’s Soft Energy Path 180 12.3 This Is the Place! 185 Notes 187 Bibliography 188 13 The California Wind Rush 191 13.1 The Deluge 191 13.2 The Danish Invasion 194 13.3 Brand New Day 199 Notes 203 Bibliography 204 14 Germany’s Giant 207 14.1 Ulrich Hütter Returns 207 14.2 Bottoms Up 215 14.3 Our Common Future 218 Notes 220 Bibliography 221 15 Spain’s Wind Power Miracle 223 15.1 A Hot Day in Madrid 223 15.2 Wind Policy Push 228 15.3 Denmark’s Design 229 Notes 233 Bibliography 234 x Contents 16 Europe Sails Ahead 237 16.1 Wind Power Reincarnated 237 16.2 The Wind Power Wizard 242 16.3 The Wind Virus 246 Notes 249 Bibliography 250 17 Reigniting American Wind Power 253 17.1 Picking up the Pieces 253 17.2 Iowa Innovates 257 17.3 The Selfish Invention 262 Notes 265 Bibliography 266 18 India’s Wind Power Path 269 18.1 Coping with the Crisis 269 18.2 A Star Is Born 274 18.3 Gamesa Gets It 278 18.4 The Path Forward 279 Notes 281 Bibliography 282 19 China’s Wind Power Surge 285 19.1 The Birth of Goldwind 285 19.2 The Rise of Sinovel 289 19.3 The Year of Adjustment 293 19.4 Sinovel’s Stall 297 19.5 Recalibration 300 Notes 303 Bibliography 304 20 The Globalization of Wind Power 307 20.1 Into the Fire 307 20.2 The Final Frontier 311 20.3 A Stable Sunset 314 20.4 Around the World 317 20.5 The Tipping Point 318 20.6 Back to the Future 321 Notes 324 Bibliography 325 Index 329 xi Preface When I joined the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 1994, wind power appeared to have reached its nadir. The California Wind Rush of the 1980s had crashed, global energy prices had fallen from their peaks, and wind turbine manufacturers and developers were struggling to stay afloat. Wind power technology itself appeared unrefined and sometimes unreliable. This was before policy makers in the United States and Europe began enacting support pro- grams that would ultimately jumpstart the rise of wind power in the twenty-first century. When US manufacturer Kenetech filed for bankruptcy in the spring of 1996, it seemed to confirm our worst fears about the future of wind energy. Yet—to those who studied the technology—it was abundantly clear that wind power still had enormous potential to transform the global energy landscape. Both public and private research efforts had advanced the technology to the point where it had become evident that wind power could successfully inte- grate into power networks across the globe and—with continued effort—we believed that wind power would eventually achieve the cost and reliability targets needed to compete head‐to‐head with conventional generation options in a commercial environment. The technology just needed more time and additional policy support in order to get the ball rolling again. Today, as we look back from 2019, what’s happened since has exceeded the expectations of even the most optimistic wind power believers. From a global installed base of 3.5 gigawatts (GW) in 1994, wind power grew to nearly 600 GW by the end of 2018. In other words, the installed base of wind power increased over one hundred and fifty times. Wind power is now being added to power networks around the world at a rate of over fifty gigawatts per year. Here in the United States, there’s more wind and solar being added to the grid than all other sources combined. The rise of wind power has been breathtaking. Wind power’s rise occurred just in time. The growing threat of climate change is the greatest challenge facing humankind today, and zero‐greenhouse gas emitting wind power technologies represent one of the great technological solutions at our disposal. Wind power is now playing a critical role in ushering much‐needed transformation into the global energy system. Given the urgency xii Preface of the climate crisis, it is more important than ever to hasten the adoption of wind power and all other low carbon technologies. Given the success to date, it’s now time to hit the accelerator, not the brake. Our future depends upon it. Because of the important role that wind power is playing on the global stage, I believe it is important to convey the full story of wind power’s arrival on the global energy scene.

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