During the heyday of the Great California Wind Rush in the early to mid 1980s, there were a handful of wind turbines installed in the Salinas Valley. Granted, the Salinas Valley is hardly on the world’s wind power map, it’s a wind energy backwater even in California. It’s better known for wine, fresh vegetables and books by local author John Steinbeck.
I didn’t know any wind turbines had been installed in the Salinas Valley until I began researching the half dozen or so GE machines installed by Foundation Windpower in the last decade. (See The Distributed Wind Turbines of the Salinas Valley and Palmdale California.)
We now know there were three early projects installed in the Salinas Valley. There’s some published data on one and nothing on the other two.
First, here’s an important caveat. There’s very little in the public record on these projects. Second, we’re dependent on the memories of participants from more than forty years ago. My thanks to all my colleagues here and abroad who chimed in on the earlier version of this article. Researching these projects took far more time than any of us first imagined.
My thanks to colleagues, Jytte Thorndahl of the Danish Energy Museum, Erik Grove-Nielsen of windsofchange.dk, Arne Jaeger of the German Windpower Museum, Erik Möllerström of Högskolan i Halmstad, and Matt Tritt for helping sort out the murky wind history of the Salinas Valley and a practically unknown Danish inventor, and to Klaus Rockenbauer of Global Windphotos for the use of his photographs.
Casas del Sol’s Herbert Ranch Project (King City)
This is the only project on which I could find any documents. Casas del Sol’s Herbert Ranch project was installed in Monterey County’s Salinas Valley sometime before 1985, probably in late 1984. The developer, Casas del Sol, used an address in upscale Pacific Grove, a part of the ritzy Monterey peninsula. They installed four Enertech E44s, a 13.4 meter diameter, 40 kW, downwind, three-blade wind turbine.
According to the California Energy Commission’s first Wind Project Performance Report, these turbines were installed in the first quarter of 1985 and generated
155,000 kWh through the year.[1] In 1986 they generated only 128,000 kWh during a full year of operation.[2] In 1987, production fell further to 103,000 kWh.[3] And by 1988 they were hardly working at all, generating only 45,000 kWh.[4] They dropped off the face of the earth and stopped reporting by 1989.[5]
During their best year of operation, each unit only generated 40,000 kWh each for a paltry 280 kWh/m²/yr. In those days a respectable performance was 500 kWh/m²/yr. For example, US Windpower was delivering 800 kWh/m²/yr from its huge fleet of 4,000 turbines during the mid 1980s.
This was a project that wasn’t going to make it, largely due to poor siting. Matt Tritt, a very early pioneer in California’s wind business, was surprised they produced anything at all.
The Enertechs were placed west of King City across the broad, flat Salinas Valley in the foothills of the Santa Lucia Mountains. “They were grossly misplaced,” says Tritt.[6] The predominant wind direction is north to south, not east to west.
Despite this project’s failure, the E44 was a real wind turbine with a real track record. In the mid 1980s there were some 550 E44s in California’s Altamont Pass and in the San Gorgonio Pass. The reason for noting this will become apparent when discussing the following two undocumented projects.
Casas del Sol’s Enertechs were eventually removed and carted off to the SeaWest site in the Altamont Pass as spares, according to Mark Haller, a former manager of the SeaWest site.
Appropriate Power’s Darrieus Turbines (Soledad)
Tritt was a partner and prospector for Appropriate Power, a firm spun off from a Ventura, California manufacturer of heavy-duty oil field equipment.[7] Using a DOE/Sandia design in the public domain, they developed a 150-kW Darrieus turbine using extruded aluminum blades.[8]
The Ventura manufacturer was interested in developing the wind turbines, Tritt explains, so it could build gearboxes for the turbines like it was already making for the oil industry. The erstwhile manufacturer sold shares in the future wind farm before the company had built any wind turbines.
They erected one prototype near Buellton in the Santa Ynez Valley in 1982 before installing four turbines just north of Soledad in 1983. They got one turbine working for a year or two, says Tritt, before they were all removed.
Soledad’s Mystery Turbines Developed by Niels Borre
I thought that was it in the Salinas Valley until Klaus Rockenbauer at Global-Windphotos posted images of a group of wind turbines east from the town of Soledad. Rockenbauer photographed a cluster of wind turbines in May 2013. From his research, “In Google Earth, they were already existing on images from 1989.” That’s the post-tax credit period or after the subsidies that launched the wind rush had expired. This suggests that the turbines had been installed as part of the wind rush. However, the turbines were never reported to the state of California and don’t appear in any of the CEC’s wind project performance reports.
There appears to have been two clusters of five turbines each. In Rockenbauer’s photos there are nine turbines standing derelict. There is a foundation for the tenth turbine.
The site is located at 36° 25.590’N 121° 15.956’W (See https://maps.app.goo.gl/7PUJw3Du2EfUVZmR7.) just off of Fabry Road east of Soledad, California.
Rockenbauer’s photos of the three-blade turbines created quite a stir on both sides of the Atlantic. They are not Enertech E44s and they are not like any other wind turbine I’ve ever seen.
Unbeknownst to me when I stumbled down this rabbit hole, Tritt had discovered these machines in 1982 when he was wind prospecting in the Salinas Valley, an area he considered his backyard.
The project was developed, as Tritt remembers it, by a Neils Borre. Tritt describes Borre as the kind of Dane who wore gold chains around his neck, suggesting he was, shall we say, a bit more flamboyant than most Danes.
While Tritt’s memory may be a bit rusty, it’s still functioning just fine. Borre, indeed, was well known in Denmark, and therein is a tale.
Niels Borre’s Checkered Past
Niels Borre had left a trail of wind turbine wreckage across Denmark before he popped up in California.
The first published record of Borre I came across is from 1979. Borre had reportedly developed a sailwing turbine that was marketed in California by Lund Enterprises. The sales brochure called the sailwing turbine the “windflower.” At least one turbine had been damaged in a storm in Denmark in 1977.[9],[10]
Then Jytte Thondahl of the Danish Energy Museum found a clipping in their archives from 1979 claiming that Borre had found “success” in the United States after leaving Denmark. He said he was forced to leave because the country’s bureaucracy constantly refused him approvals for his wind turbines.[11] (Danes active in the wind industry at the time have a far different take on why he left, but none would comment for the record.) Thorndahl also found a mention of a “Borremøllen” in late 1976.[12]
Preben Maegaard, one of Denmark’s wind pioneers, devotes several pages of the book, Wind Power for the World, to Niels Borre. It’s a damning account, though some of the details may have become muddled over the decades, according to Erik Grove-Nielsen.[13]
Maegaard describes one event in 1976 when, for whatever reason, the Borre wind turbine was motored to show it spinning. This likely didn’t go down well with Maegaard and the other Danes present and that was the reason Maegaard mentions it.[14]
Subsequently, Borre developed a giromill in the fall of 1977, according to Maegaard. At an open house to exhibit the device, the wind turbine again failed to turn in what Maegaard describes as “ample” wind. And in a repeat of the previous experience, the turbine was motored to “give some illusion of [it] being a wind turbine,” says Maegaard critically.
Worse was yet to come. Borre designed a giromill for Dansk Vindkraft Industri. This giromill was installed at the Risø test station for small windmills, and was standing when I visited in 1980. It’s important to note that this wind turbine was not called or known as a Borre design. As such, those at Risø don’t remember ever testing a “Borre” wind turbine.
Regardless of what it was called, or who manufactured it, Maegaard said the turbine went into overspeed during high winds, forcing Risø to call in a mechanic to lasso the machine to a stop.[15] This didn’t work and the machine destroyed itself, writes Maegaard.
And the failures continued to pile up for Borre. He then lost two conventional wind turbines in windy northwest Jutland. Unfortunately for the farmer that bought the turbines, Borre had already left for sunnier climes where he was selling himself as “Mr. Windpower,” sneers Maegaard.
And that’s where Borre’s exploits enters our story in the Salinas Valley. Arne Jaeger of the German Windpower Museum dug through his voluminous files and found an advertisement from 1984 for the “Moneymaker.”[16] Yes, that’s what Golden State Windpower called the “Borre kW Danish-American WECS.” This was the height of the California Wind Rush and WECs was technocratic jargon for Wind Energy Conversion Device. That they publicly called this machine a “moneymaker” should have been a tip off to sophisticated investors to steer clear of this particular “wind turbine.”
All of this is to explain why the wind turbines in Rockenbauer’s photos look like they had a Danish influence because they did. But it also explains why Tritt said these machines gave him the impression that something was missing, because there probably was. Borre had never built a functioning and reliable wind turbine before he left Denmark. And it appears he had no better experience in California.
So, here are the specifications of the Borre’s Soledad wind turbine from that long ago advertisement.
- 3 blade, upwind rotor
- 41 feet (12.5 meters) diameter
- 50 foot (15.2 meters) truss tower
- Danish profile, sheet-metal covered blades
- Overspeed control is by mechanically yawing across the wind
- Planetary gearbox (yet claims “direct drive rotor, gearbox, & generator!”)
- 60 rpm
The ad goes to say the wind turbine will have a “Long life at less than $1,000 per kW.” They’ve certainly been derelict for a very long time—for more than 40 years. In that sense, they have had a long life. The “Moneymaker” would cost $50,000 per turbine. For the ten turbines near Soledad, someone lost at least ½ million in 1980s dollars.
These three projects illustrate that all was not well in the Salinas Valley during California’s famed Wind Rush. The Salinas Valley was not alone. There were many questionable projects in the other wind resource areas as well. Fortunately for the wind industry those days are behind us, and even in the Salinas Valley there are now modern wind turbines standing proudly in the fields and vineyards producing renewable electricity for farms, homes, and businesses.
[1] “Results from the Wind Project Performance Reporting System: 1985 Annual Report” (Sacramento, California: California Energy Commission, August 1986). Page 58.
[2] “Results from the Wind Project Performance Reporting System: 1986 Annual Report” (Sacramento, California: California Energy Commission, January 1988). Page 55.
[3] “Results from the Wind Project Performance Reporting System: 1987 Annual Report” (Sacramento, California: California Energy Commission, August 1988). Page 57.
[4] “Results from the Wind Project Performance Reporting System: 1988 Annual Report” (Sacramento, California: California Energy Commission, August 1989). Page 55.
[5] “Results from the Wind Project Performance Reporting System: 1989 Annual Report” (Sacramento, California: California Energy Commission, October 1990).
[6] Zond would eventually become one of California’s major wind developers during the 1980s and 1990s.
[7] Ventura, and Ventura County remain a major producer of crude oil in California.
[8] Personal correspondence 25 October 2017, and a telephone interview 7 March 2024.
[9] K.H. Hohenemser, “Sailwing Wind Energy Systems,” in Wind Energy Innovative Systems, SERI/TP-49-184, 1979, 283–99, https://books.google.com/books?id=Gu0f_ML_1DkC. Note that I could not find any other reference that Niels Borre had built a sailwing wind turbine.
[10] Not to be confused with Claus Nybroe’s “Windflower,” a multiblade turbine with a direct-drive generator in Denmark during this period. Erik Grove-Nielsen, “Winds Of Change: Stories of a Dawning Wind Power Industry,” Winds of Change, accessed March 11, 2024, https://www.windsofchange.dk/WOC-danturb.php.
[11] Niels-Victor Christiansen, “Bureaukrati og evige afslag tvang dansker til USA—så kom succesn,” Jyllands Posten, June 9, 1979.
[12] Jytte Thorndahl, “New Information 2 RE: Niels Borre Windmoelle i Danmark?,” March 18, 2024.
[13] Erik Grove-Nielsen, “Niels Borre in Denmark,” March 11, 2024.
[14] Preben Maegaard, “16. Consigned to Oblivion,” in Wind Power for the World: The Rise of Modern Wind Energy, vol. 1 (Singapore: Stanford Publishing, 2013), 355–87. Page 374.
[15] This isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Maegaard notes that this was used to stop run-away La Cour turbines up into the 1950s. I remember it being used when I started with Zond in 1984 to corral run-away Danish machines in high winds.
[16] “Golden State Wind Power’s 50 kW Borre Danish-American WECs the ‘Moneymaker,’” Alternative Sources of Energy Magazine, October 1984.
