The Deutches Windkraft Musuem (German Windpower Museum) has acquired one of the massive blade tips from the giant German wind turbine Growian, writes Arne Jaeger.
Jaeger found the red-painted blade tip on a farm near the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Koog test site where the turbine had been installed by the German government in the early 1980s.
The two-blade, downwind turbine was a giant for its day with a rotor 100 meters (328 feet) in diameter. The project was a disaster from the beginning of construction in the late 1970s.
At about the same time, Danish students were also building a giant wind turbine: Tvindkraft. That wind turbine is still in operation on the west coast of Denmark. (See Tvindkraft: The Giant That Shook the World Turns 42 and Confirmed: Tvindkraft Designed to be Slightly Larger than Smith-Putnam.)
Here’s what I wrote about Growian in Wind Energy for the Rest of Us on pages 57-58.
Germany’s Growian
During the late 1970s Germany’s ministry for technological development BMFT (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung) called Ulrich Hütter out of retirement to design a new wind program. He concluded that his 1960s approach still represented the state-of-the-art, and that with the technology gained since his turbine had been dismantled, the design could be scaled-up to multi-megawatt size. Thus Growian (Grosse Wind Energie Anlage or large wind turbine) was born.

Hütter remained cautious and as with his early experimental turbine, recommended loading the rotor lightly. He suggested that a rotor 80 meters (260 feet) in diameter be used to drive only a 1 MW generator. But the contractor had a grander vision; they wanted to claim the title of “world’s largest wind turbine” in a race with the United States.
In 1983, MAN completed installation of a 3 MW turbine 100 meters (328 feet) in diameter. They realized their mistake even before installation was complete. The proposed height of the tower exceeded existing crane capacity, forcing the company to seek approval for a shorter tower. MAN did succeed in building the world’s largest wind turbine–its nacelle alone weighed as much as a jumbo jet–but they also led German engineering to its most spectacular aeronautical failure. In the end Growian cost nearly twice that estimated and was dismantled in 1987 after operating only 420 hours. To save face after the highly public failure, the project was labeled a “success” by all those involved.
MAN tried to rescue its reputation with two smaller turbines, the WKA 60 for the island of Helgoland off the northwest German coast and the AWEC 60 for Cabo Villano in Spain. Unlike Growian, the two machines used a three-blade upwind rotor that more closely resembled Danish machines than any of the Hütter-derived designs. Proponents of the turbines argued later that these machines were never intended to compete commercially. They were only demonstrations. What they were demonstrating remains unclear.
