BACKGROUND

The Tvind wind turbine is among one of the most well-known turbines in the world, but also a piece of Danish history within the wind industry. The construction of the 54 meter tall turbine began in 1975 and was ready to produce electricity in 1978. It was built by teachers and students from the nearby Tvind schools, with the goal to build the biggest wind turbine in the world. In the initial phase more than 400 people participated in preparing the site for construction. At this time the Tvind turbine project had a highly political motive towards being a cleaner and safer alternative to energy production than nuclear power, which at this time had large movements against the concept.

EFFECT

In 1978 the Tvind turbine was the highest performing wind turbine in in the world. Until year 2000 it still was the highest performing MW turbine in Denmark, and today it is in fact the oldest producing MW turbine in the world.

In the beginning it was decided that the turbine was to produce only on half its capacity, at 900 kWh, instead of the full capacity of 2 MW. This was due to that the nearby schools in the area, were not able to use all the produced energy. Therefore, it was rather prefered to have a turbine running on half its capacity and hereby lasting for more years. However shortly after, it turned out that the design of the turbine’s blades not were optimal for the durability of the turbine. Hereby resulting in that the turbine only could perform 22 RPM instead of the 36 RPM at its max performance, due to the pitch system blocking itself.

The annual production of the turbine today is averagely 0,5 mio kWh

Today GNL Service is the service provider for maintaining the Tvind turbine.