The Great California Wind Rush (1980-1985) was on and like gold had done before it, the lure of riches drew players from across North America and Europe. I remember hearing Dutch, German, Danish, and Swiss Italian being spoken in just one night at a local bar. Soon the Scots added their distinctive “bur” to the cacophony.
Scottish heavy engineering firm James Howden Group, a storied company from Glasgow’s glory days, created a subsidiary, Howden Wind Farms, to get its piece of the action.
Howden, like many other erstwhile wind turbine manufacturers, wanted to play in what then appeared like a burgeoning market. And though they understood the risks of scaling up an early design, they proceeded anyway in the hope of fixing what needed fixing later. Worse, they didn’t adequately test the blades on their prototype, even though they had ample opportunity to do so. Howden’s hubris was headed for a reckoning.
The company’s star-crossed wind venture began when it tried to jump start its wind business by buying a design from elsewhere. They first turned to the Danes around 1980 then to eccentric British inventor Sir Henry Lawson-Tancred. In 1982 they imported an American-made wind turbine from WTG Energy Systems of Buffalo, New York.[1]
The WTG turbine was ostensibly based on Danish experience at Gedser in the 1960s. Like Juul’s Gedser design, WTG used a three-blade upwind rotor 24 meters (80 feet) in diameter with pitchable blade tips for rotor control.[2] This was a big turbine for the day—200 kW when everything else was 50 kW or less–and that size appealed to companies in the utility industry like Howden.
For those with any historical knowledge of the wind industry, this was prehistory and the WTG turbine, in particular, was prehistoric. Howden installed the WTG turbine at Carmarthen Bay, Wales. (There would be several other wind turbines tested there in the years to come.) To their dismay, they estimated that the rotor spars were so undersized that they wouldn’t survive a year from gravity loads alone.[3]
Not satisfied with what was then on the market, they chose to build their own.
By the summer of 1983 Howden began operating their take on the WTG design on Burgar Hill, in Scotland’s Orkney Islands. Howden had wisely adopted pitchable blade tips or “partial-span pitch control” from WTG instead of opting for something more foolhardy like the tip brakes then being used on some American machines of the day.
By the end of 1985 Howden had installed 26 MW of wind generating capacity in California’s Altamont Pass. Their project shows up in the first CEC (California Energy Commission) Wind Project Performance Reporting System report.[4]
The machines they delivered to California were giants in comparison to others in California: a 31-meter diameter turbine rated at 330 kW. This design swept nearly 50% more area of the wind stream than that of their prototype on Burgar Hill that was installed only a few years earlier.
They went even further and also shipped an experimental 750 kW turbine with a rotor 45 meters in diameter, sweeping four times more area than that first prototype in the Orkneys. The latter was one of the largest if not the largest wind turbine in California.
All told there were 93 turbines on Howden’s wind farm; 82 of which were Howden’s 330/31, one Howden 750/45, and, inexplicably, 10 Howden 60/15. Inexplicably, because the usual iteration was to start with a 15 meter turbine and scale up from there. Howden apparently hadn’t got the memo.
In short, Howden went too big too fast in both the size of their machine and in the number of turbines in a very far off field.
One of the lessons the wind industry painfully learned in California was that it’s best to sort out problems in your own back yard before deploying a product halfway around the world. It’s much easier—and cheaper—to troubleshoot problems and replace components a short drive from the plant. This facilitates learning from the “ground up,” providing immediate feedback to not only engineers in the design studios but also to those on the shop floor. This was an advantage the Danes had over everyone else. They were deploying hundreds of turbines in a vibrant home market. Often they could see their own wind turbines from their office windows and where they couldn’t; the turbines were only a few kilometers drive away.
In an innovative twist for turbines this large, Howden’s wind turbines used wood- epoxy laminate blades rather than the more common fiberglass. Using technology developed by America’s Gougeon Brothers, Howden’s contractor, Composite Technologies, began building blades not only for Howden but also for their British competitor, Wind Energy Group (WEG). The technology was sound, and wood composite was superior in strength yet lighter than the fiberglass then used.
[Note: I remember seeing 10-meter sets of Composite Technologies wood laminate blades being installed to replace the whip like fiberglass blades on Storm Master turbines in Tehachapi. Dozens of turbine were retrofitted with the British-made wood blades and for the first time the turbines could operate reliably. It was a remarkable improvement.]
However, design of the blade root and poor quality control of the manufacturing process was one of the factors in Howden’s downfall. The blades used a rectangular root to attach the blades to the hub. This concentrated loads at the corners where the attachment bolts would eventually fail. Misalignment of the attachment bolts also played a part. The latter defect could have been easily corrected if caught by Composite Technologies before the blades left the plant.
Danish blades had round roots, and this was ruefully noted by the Howden’s then managing director one James Douglas Howden Hume when blades started falling off his wind turbines.[5]
1986 was a bad year for Howden in California. Howden’s 31 meter machines operated only during the first two quarters. The 15 meter machines didn’t operate at all, and the big 45 meter turbine operated minimally.
In the meantime, Howden had installed a 26 meter version designed for high wind sites at Southern California’s Dever test station in the San Gorgonio Pass. This unit was extensively instrumented and both Howden and SERI (the Solar Energy Research Institute) began analyzing blade loads and comparing those with that calculated by Howden.[6] It’s noteworthy that these tests could have been carried out in Scotland before any wind turbines were shipped to California.
To Howden’s credit, they quickly identified the problem with the blades and created a solution. They hurriedly redesigned the hub and blades, replacing all the original 31 meter rotors with redesigned 33 meter sets in 1987. As a consequence 1987 was a dismal year. Though the 15 meter and the 45 meter machines didn’t produce anything, the now 33 meter turbines ran for three of the four quarters. Altogether, the project generated a yield of 19 kWh/m². Howden turned in the worst performance of any wind farm in the state that year, but at least it was back on track.
By now Howden was in full crisis mode. Following shortly on the heels of discovering the design and manufacturing flaws in the blades, the stock markets in New York and London crashed on Monday 19th October 1987—Black Monday. Howden’s stock fell precipitously. Howden’s board met secretly and removed James Douglas Howden Hume as the board’s chairman, ending 134 years of the Howden family’s control of the company.[7]
In 1988 Howden still didn’t get the 15 meter machines running, and the 45 meter turbine ran only sporadically. However, the 33 meter turbines turned in a respectable performance, delivering a yield of 500 kWh/m²–about in the middle of the pack. That year US Windpower turned in ~800 kWh/m² from its large fleet.
Howden had a so-so year in 1989 with the 45 meter unit running for at least three of four quarters. The 15 meter machines were a no show again. Howden’s total yield for the year ~400 kWh/m² was half that of US Windpower’s ~800 kWh/m².
But by then it was too late. Howden threw in the towel, bailing out of the wind business in April 1989.
They still had contracts for at least two turbines that I’ve been able to track down. They installed a 750 kW model in Gotland, Sweden and an even larger 1,000 kW turbine installed in 1989 for Britain’s Central Electricity Generating Board in Richmond, England.
Back in California, something happened in 1990. My scribbled notes on the CEC report questioned the numbers that Howden turned in to the state. (According to the CEC, none of the data was verified.) The 45 meter unit turned in a respectable performance for three of the four quarters. The 15 meter machines were finally operating, though they lost two of them by the end of the year. And the 33 meter turbines generated more than their projections, bringing Howden’s yield for the year to rival that from US Windpower. Howden’s new rotors were finally showing what they could do. Howden could make them work reliably after all.
By 1991, six years after original installation, Howden was finally “rollin.” The 91 turbines remaining produced 60% of their projection for a yield of ~700 kWh/m², comparable to that from US Windpower, though much less than the 1,200 kWh/m² from WEG, their English competitor, on a more exposed site. (WEG was also using composite wood blades but full-span pitch control rather than Howden’s partial-span pitch control.)
Howden’s site was settling down in 1992, producing from all turbine models through all four quarters. Yields were modest; they were in the middle of the pack for California projects. Performance was similar from 1993 through 1997.
In 1993, the Howden 750 on Gotland was pulled down and sold for scrap after years of standing idle. Reportedly, it was reinstalled in central Sweden in 1996.[8]
In 1998 Howden Wind Farms either stopped reporting to the state or ceased operation. The CEC’s report says the company had zero production from zero turbines in 1999.
Colin Anderson writes in his book that Howden’s 33-meter turbines with the redesigned rotor operated for a total 23 years, reaching their design life.[9] This suggests that the turbines operated into the early 2000s.
It seems arcane now, but there were analysts—such as myself—who followed the success or failure of products this closely, especially those that were highly touted—as were Howden’s.
Though Howden’s venture into wind ended in failure, they went back to building big things for big power plants.
But it was for naught. Howden was aquired in 1997.[10] The company has since changed hands again. In the current corporate iteration, Howden still manufacturers fans and pumps for steam turbines.
“As of 2009, [the Howden] redbrick factory – “one of the last remaining Victorian heavy engineering works in Glasgow”, and the place where the tunnel boring machines used in the excavation of the Channel Tunnel were made – lies empty,” according to an entry on Wikimedia.[11]
It was the end of an era for Glasgow and for Scottish wind.
See also The Howden Wind Turbine Theme Song—“Turn em On, Let em Run”.
[1] Jamieson, Peter. “E-Mail Correspondence on the Subject of Howden’s Wind Venture.,” October 4, 2023.
[2] Spaulding, A. P. “WTG Energy Systems’ MP1-200 200 Kilowatt Wind Turbine Generator,” 10, 1979. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19800008198.
[3] This contrasts markedly with the reports from WTG itself. See Rose, M.B. “Operational Experience on the MP-200 Series Commercial Wind Turbine Generators.” WTG Energy Systems, 251 Elm St., Buffalo, NY 14203, 1980. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19830010988.
[4] “Results from the Wind Project Performance Reporting System 1985 Annual Report.” California Energy Commission, August 1986. P500-86-013.
[5] Hume, David H. Douglas Hume a Personal Story : The Howden Heritage. First Edition. David H Hume, 2009. See Chapter 17, Crises, pages 189-196.
[6] Hock, S M, T E Hausfeld, G Hampson, and R W Thresher. “Preliminary Results from the Dynamic Response Testing of the Howden 330-kW HAWT.” In Windpower 87, TP-217-3243:9. San Francisco, California: SERI, 1987; and Madsen, P H, S M Hock, and T E Hausfeld. “Turbulence Loads on the Howden 26-m-Diameter Wind Turbine.” In 7th ASME Wind Energy Symposium New Orleans, Louisiana, 12. SERI/TP-217-3269. New Orleans, Louisiana: SERI, 1988. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/3269.pdf.
[7] Hume, David H. Douglas Hume a Personal Story : The Howden Heritage. First Edition. David H Hume, 2009. See Chapter 17, Crises, pages 189-196.
[8] February 1996, 1. “Howden Turbine Emerges from the Grave.” Windpower Monthly, February 1, 1996. https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/959984/howden-turbine-emerges-grave.
[9] Anderson, Colin. Wind Turbines: Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press, 2020. Page 160.
[10] “Timeline : Howden.” Accessed October 4, 2023. https://www.howden.com/en-us/about/timeline.
[11] “James Howden.” In Wikipedia, May 17, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Howden&oldid=1088251303.
