WinD Power

Renewables

Electric Vehicles

Essays

Latest Articles by Paul Gipe

Daf Indal Kortrightcentre0004

By

Paul Gipe

DAF-Indal 50 kW Darrieus in the Pacheco Pass

The Canadian fabricator, DAF-Indal, installed a second generation 50 kW Darrieus turbine in 1981 at the the Romero Overlook Visitor Center on a ridge above the San Luis Reservoir in California’s Pacheco Pass. The two-blade design evolved from work begun in the mid 1970s. A second unit was installed at Southern …

NREL’s Owen Roberts reports that FloWind’s prototype 100 kW Darrieus wind turbine installed in early 1982 is still standing inoperative near Ellensburg, Washington. FloWind, a creation of Flow Industries in Kent, Washington, developed a series of Darrieus or Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) in the early to mid 1980s. Their first …

20231129 New Cuyama 0028

By

Paul Gipe

New Used EV Thoughts–Tips on Buying

Prepare for the EV. If your house requires a new service panel, it’s good to find out early. Replacing a service panel is disruptive so it’s best to get it done when most convenient. Often that’s before the EV arrives and you need to charge it. Installing a new service …

In a fascinating interview with Robert Llewellyn of Fully Charged, Ford CEO Jim Farley clearly described the challenge facing legacy auto manufacturers in North America—and Europe for that matter in moving to EVs. (See Ford CEO Jim Farley’s Fascinating ‘Take’ On Taking On Chinese Car Companies on the Everything Electric …

Recently I was approached about an article I’d written in 2013 where I accused The Nature Conservancy of greenwashing. (See Another Poorly Sited Hoosier VAWT Vying for Worst Turbine Install.) My correspondent noted that his company had posted an extensive discussion of greenwashing and suggested I might link to it. …

Other Articles

Daf Indal Kortrightcentre0004

By

Paul Gipe

DAF-Indal 50 kW Darrieus in the Pacheco Pass

The Canadian fabricator, DAF-Indal, installed a second generation 50 kW Darrieus turbine in 1981 at the the Romero Overlook Visitor Center on a ridge above the San Luis Reservoir in California’s Pacheco Pass. The two-blade design evolved from work begun in the mid 1970s. A second unit was installed at Southern …

Solar Rockenhausen Pfalz 20110519 12

By

Jérôme Guillet

Suggestions to reform the German electricity market

Overall, we believe that this handful of relatively straightforward measures could materially enhance the transition towards a low-carbon Electricity System at low cost. The Energiewende gets a bad rap in the English-language press, even though it has helped create a competitive renewable energy industry from scratch – something the whole world benefits from, even though mostly German ratepayers pay for it. Our proposed reforms would help reduce that last item.

Accidents & Safety

I’ve been concerned about safely working with wind energy since 1976 when I nearly killed myself taking down a 1930s-era windcharger. While wind energy is an environmentally beneficial technology–and that’s the reason we need to use it–it can and has killed. Consequently, I’ve been tracking fatal accidents in wind energy since I wrote an obituary for a colleague, Terry Mehrkam, in 1981. For this reason, my books on wind energy have always included a section on safety.

Family of Chehalis Man Killed at Wind Farm Site Settles Wrongful Death Claim for $12 Million

By

Eric Rosane

The family of a Chehalis wind farm worker who died last year while on the job has settled a wrongful death claim for $12 million after filing suit in King County Superior Court.

Worker falls to death inside wind turbine tower in California

By

Leigh Collins

Mario Contreras Jr was working for Site Constructors Inc at an unidentified project near Palm Springs

Big Spring man fell 80-100 feet while working on Christoval wind turbine

By

Alana Edgin

An incident report from the Tom Green County Sheriff’s Office has revealed more details into the accidental falling death of Aaron Scott Johnson, 39.

Teen found dead in Jeep on wind-farm access road in Cambria County

By

Steve Marroni

An autopsy Saturday revealed the cause of death to be multiple blunt force trauma to the upper torso, the Tribune-Democrat of Johnstown is reporting.

‘Recipe for disaster’: Heavy fines as US wind farm worker dies helping buried colleague

By

Andrew Lee

Renewable energy developer RES and two contractors were condemned over the “heartbreaking and completely preventable” death of a wind farm worker who died while trying to rescue a colleague after a trench collapsed during construction of a US wind farm.

Past OSHA inspections reveal health concerns at LM Wind Power

By

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is looking into how 145 LM Wind Power employees contracted COVID-19 in March and April.

Why do so many US workers fall to their deaths?

By

Michael Sainato

There were 5,250 fatal work injuries in the US in 2018, with falls a leading cause of death – and cuts in government oversight may lead to more

Documents Detail Harrowing Attempts to Save Chehalis Man at Wind Project Site

By

Eric Schwartz

When a trench partially collapsed on a coworker at the Skookumchuck Wind Project outside of Rainier on the morning of Thursday, Jan. 9, 24-year-old Chehalis man Jonathan Stringer didn’t hesitate. He jumped in the hole with another worker and began attempting to save his buried colleague by digging out dirt and rocks with his bare hands. That’s when another collapse completely buried Stringer, prompting a harrowing ordeal during which about 25 other workers tried in frantic shifts to save him, but ultimately failed to reach him in time.

Worker Dies, Another Injured After Trench Collapse at Skookumchuck Wind Project Site

By

Eric Rosane

One person working at the Skookumchuck Wind Project construction site is dead and another is critically injured after a trench collapsed on the two workers Thursday morning.

Incident at Arcosa results in 1 death, 1 injury

By

Christopher Braunschweig

A fatal, work-related incident this past weekend at Arcosa, a wind tower manufacturing plant in Newton, has resulted in one person dead and another critically injured, the Newton Fire Department confirmed Monday.

Tower Climbing Safety

Safety

In 2013 I pulled together some links to documents on safety relative to the wind industry. These topics went beyond simply tower climbing safety and safety at height and included work around rotating machinery and other common industrial hazards. Unfortunately, the industry has changed dramatically in the past decade. Most safety documents once freely available are now securely hidden by paywalls. Moreover, even the wind energy trade associations where these documents were once located have ceased to exist, merging with other renewable trade associations. Some of the British documents are still available and I’ve provide links to them. I found one public document on the off shore industry in the USA.

Europe

Great Britain

North America

USA

Contact the Clean Power Association.

Worker Health and Safety on Offshore Wind Farms, Transportation Research Board, 2012.

Canada

Contact the Canadian Renewable Energy Association.


Mortal Accident Summary

I no longer actively track deaths in the wind industry. However, I will update my data as it becomes available. Below is a presentation updating my statistics to 2020. Also below is a link to the original article. For a complete analysis see Chapter 17 in my most recent book Wind Energy for the Rest of Us.

19_2_44_gipe_wind_breath_of_life_or_kiss_of_death_analysis_of_wind_energy_fatalities_public-jpg

Note that the spreadsheet has six tabs. This is only the summary page and does not include all the data on the summary page.

My Deaths Database is publicly available. Simply ask for it.

History of Wind Power

Utrc Pendulum Composite Bearingless Rotor

Failed Dream: the Bearingless Wind Turbine Rotor of the Late 1970s

By

Paul Gipe

On paper the composite bearingless rotor seemed too good to be true: a wind turbine rotor that enabled the blades to change pitch without bearings in the hub. And the wind turbine would passively use aerodynamic forces to orient the rotor downwind of the tower. It was the height of simplicity and would be cheap to build. What could go wrong? The short answer: everything. Eventually the nearly 400 wind turbines using the concept in California during the Great California Wind Rush of the early to mid 1980s were scraped off the face of the earth for scrap. And therein lays a sprawling tale.

Windtech Wind Ridge Tehachapi 1984 15 72x1200x800

UTRC, Windtech, Dynergy, & Composite Bearingless Rotor Timeline

By

Paul Gipe

For details on development of the Composite Bearingless Rotor and its derivatives see my accompanying article Failed Dream: the Bearingless …

Whitewater Wash San Gorgonio 06

NREL’s Wild West of Wind: a Glimpse of California’s Past

By

Paul Gipe

While interviewing Brian Smith about his early career during the Great California Wind Rush, he mentioned that NREL had done a retrospective on the history of the lab. Specifically, he suggested I take a look at the chapter titled the Wild West of Wind. Yee ha! Brian was right. He and Walt Musial have some great tales in that chapter. If you weren’t working in California’s wind industry then and you want a flavor of what it was like, take a look. The title is a pretty accurate summary of the times.

Kirkbymoor Dwt Helicopter

Photos of 1990s Windane Added to Site

By

Paul Gipe

While editing an article I stumbled across some photos of a Windane turbine on Pajeula Peak in the Tehachapi Pass. …

Turbine Blade With Man Sitting On It Likely Putnam

Wind power development: A historical review published

By

Paul Gipe

Another article on the history of wind turbine development has been published in the academic publication Wind Engineering, an imprint …

A Windmill Near Brighton By John Constable

Learning to love monsters: Windmills were once just machines on the land but now seem delightfully bucolic. Could wind turbines win us over too?

By

External Source

Yet perceptions of windmills have not been uniformly idyllic. Since they first appeared on the landscape of medieval Europe, windmills represented an imposition of the technological on the pastoral. They were, in the phrase of the wind energy author Paul Gipe, ‘machines in the garden’, straddling the boundary of the agrarian and mechanical.

12320 Next

History of Wind Power in North America

History of Wind Power Internationally

Museums with Wind Exhibits

Museums often have extensive permanent collections and only display a small portion at any one time. Museums frequently change their exhibits and that is the case below. The museums noted here have all changed their exhibits since I last visited. Some have created “virtual” exhibits, and these I’ve noted.

North American Open-Air Museums

European Open-Air Museums

There’s nothing like walking among the operating windmills of Zaanse Schaans in the Zaan district of Noord Holland, or strolling among the vertically-jutting blade sculpture at the Folkecenter for Renewable Energy in Denmark to gain a sense of the importance of wind in European–and thus Western–culture. For the avid wind aficionado and the scholar alike, I strongly suggest putting one of the many open-air museums in Europe on your travel itinerary. Some we discovered by serendipity others we searched out. All were worth the effort.

Note that in most western European countries there are national “windmill” days where many of the historical windmills are open to the public. Many now include some modern wind turbines as well. Often the national windmill day is the second Saturday in May though this may vary by country. In Germany, Deutscher Mühlentag is held on Whit Monday or Pfingstmontag in German. In 2023 Whit Monday was 29 May.

  • Museum Park, Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin, Germany displays a historic stage mill, a mechanical farm windmill, and a micro wind turbine.
  • Schloss Sanssouci Berlin displays a reconstructed stage or gallery windmill that has served the palace (Schloss) since 1787. It was a mill on this site that served in the famous legend of the Miller of Sanssouci who challenged kingly power.
  • Windmill Blade Expo at the Folkecenter for Renewable Energy in Jutland, Denmark.
  • Showroom for historical Danish wind turbines at the Folkecenter for Renewable Energy in Jutland, Denmark–An extensive collection of wind turbine drive trains from the early days of Danish wind power.
  • Poul la Cour Museum–The museum is situated in the historical buildings where Poul la Cour, affectionately called the Danish Edison by Danes, conducted his research into wind energy and hydrogen storage. The site is the cradle of modern wind energy.
  • Energimuseet Vindkraft–The museums’ open-air exhibits include the original nacelle from the famed Gedser mill designed by Johannes Juul, an erect Riisager machine from the rebirth of Danish wind energy in the late 1970s-early 1980s, a cut-away wind turbine blade and more.
  • Frilandsmuseet–The Open Air Museum north of Copenhagen is one of the largest and oldest in the world. Spread across 86 acres of land the museum houses more than 50 farms, mills and houses from the period 1650-1950.
  • Museummolen Schermerhorn–Open air museum of the polder mill on the Schermer polder in Noord Holland (north of Amsterdam).
  • Germania (molen)–Platform grain grinding mill in the province of Groningen, the Netherlands. One of the more than 1,000 windmills in the Netherlands that are periodically open to the public.
  • Internationales Muhlenmuseum–in Gifhorn, Niedersachsen, Germany has 13 different windmills on display, including a Greek sail windmill.
  • World Heritage Site of Kinderdijk–The nineteen windmills of Kinderdijk illustrate the way the Dutch have used windmills to drain the polders that have made the Netherlands what it is today. Kinderdijk is most likely the world’s oldest wind farm and was in use into the 1950s.
  • De Vereniging Zaanse Molen–No tourist trip to the Netherlands is complete without a visit to Zaanse Schans and the working windmills of the Zaan district. The Society of Zaan Mills was founded in 1925, beginning with the restoration of the oil mill De Zoeker. Three years later, they opened the Mill Museum at Zaanse Schans. Now, nearly a century later, the Society possesses 12 industrial windmills, representing an important part of Dutch cultural heritage and to this day still define the Zaan skyline.
  • Museumdorf Cloppenburg is south of Oldenburg in Niedersachsen, Germany.
  • Nederlands Openluchtmuseum–Open Air Museum in Arnhem, Gelderland, the Netherlands.
  • Mola – het Provinciaal Molencentrum–East Flanders windmill museum in Belgium with four restored windmills.
  • Wind Energy Museum Norfolk Great Britain–The museum is closed in 2023. The collection depicts the evolution of polder drainage in what’s called the “Broads.” The technology for the mills and how to use them was imported from the Netherlands.
  • Deutsches Windkraftmuseum–Begun in 1997, the museum seeks to preserve some of the early electricity-generating wind turbines from the 1980s and 1990s in northern Germany. While the exhibits focus on German development of wind technology, the museum includes a Lagerwey, an early Dutch machine, early Danish wind turbines, and some American-made wind turbines as well, including a Kenetech drive train and a Bergey small wind turbine.
  • Allemolens.NL–Web site listing the location of every windmill in the Netherlands from the smallest mechanical wind pump to the giant polder draining windmills and to the multi-story stage windmills for grinding grain. They even include a few modern wind turbines as well. In Dutch.
  • Dutch Windmill and Watermill Database–Working historic windmills and watermills of the Netherlands with a searchable database and interactive map. The map identifies individual windmills and when they are open to visitors. The home page is in English, map data is in Dutch but understandable to English-speakers.
  • La route des moulins–Interactive map and list of windmills and watermills by region with a description of the specific mill in French. Includes a description of the Centre Molinologique.
  • Deutsche Gesellschaft für Mühlenkunde und Mühlenerhaltung–The German society for the preservation of wind and water mills. They too have an interactive map of the mills throughout the country. The map can be searched by town, village, or state. The detailed data includes the type of mill and its construction.

Other Open-Air Museums

  • Fred Turner Museum in Loeriesfontein, South Africa displays 27 water-pumping windmills.
  • Morawa District Historical Society and Museum–The small rural town of Morawa with its museum is approximately 400 kilometres north of the state capital Perth, in the northern wheatbelt of Western Australia. The Morawa Museum’s collection of Australian made and imported windmills consists of over 50 different models in various states of restoration.
  • Penong Windmill Museum–Penong, South Australia, includes the Comet, Australian-made, railroad water pumping windmill.
  • De Molen, Dutch Windmill–Foxton, New Zealand. De Molen is a full size 17th century replica Dutch windmill.
Utrc Pendulum Composite Bearingless Rotor

Failed Dream: the Bearingless Wind Turbine Rotor of the Late 1970s

By

Paul Gipe

On paper the composite bearingless rotor seemed too good to be true: a wind turbine rotor that enabled the blades to change pitch without bearings in the hub. And the wind turbine would passively use aerodynamic forces to orient the rotor downwind of the tower. It was the height of simplicity and would be cheap to build. What could go wrong? The short answer: everything. Eventually the nearly 400 wind turbines using the concept in California during the Great California Wind Rush of the early to mid 1980s were scraped off the face of the earth for scrap. And therein lays a sprawling tale.

Windtech Wind Ridge Tehachapi 1984 15 72x1200x800

UTRC, Windtech, Dynergy, & Composite Bearingless Rotor Timeline

By

Paul Gipe

For details on development of the Composite Bearingless Rotor and its derivatives see my accompanying article Failed Dream: the Bearingless …

Whitewater Wash San Gorgonio 06

NREL’s Wild West of Wind: a Glimpse of California’s Past

By

Paul Gipe

While interviewing Brian Smith about his early career during the Great California Wind Rush, he mentioned that NREL had done a retrospective on the history of the lab. Specifically, he suggested I take a look at the chapter titled the Wild West of Wind. Yee ha! Brian was right. He and Walt Musial have some great tales in that chapter. If you weren’t working in California’s wind industry then and you want a flavor of what it was like, take a look. The title is a pretty accurate summary of the times.

Kirkbymoor Dwt Helicopter

Photos of 1990s Windane Added to Site

By

Paul Gipe

While editing an article I stumbled across some photos of a Windane turbine on Pajeula Peak in the Tehachapi Pass. …

Turbine Blade With Man Sitting On It Likely Putnam

Wind power development: A historical review published

By

Paul Gipe

Another article on the history of wind turbine development has been published in the academic publication Wind Engineering, an imprint …

A Windmill Near Brighton By John Constable

Learning to love monsters: Windmills were once just machines on the land but now seem delightfully bucolic. Could wind turbines win us over too?

By

External Source

Yet perceptions of windmills have not been uniformly idyllic. Since they first appeared on the landscape of medieval Europe, windmills represented an imposition of the technological on the pastoral. They were, in the phrase of the wind energy author Paul Gipe, ‘machines in the garden’, straddling the boundary of the agrarian and mechanical.

12320 Next