While editing an article I stumbled across some photos of a Windane turbine on Pajeula Peak in the Tehachapi Pass. It dawned on me that I had other photos of the obscure design and I’d never added them to my web site.
I’ve now added them to a page under Small Wind Turbines in my photo gallery. See Photos of Windane Wind Turbines.
Danish Wind Technology or DWT developed several wind turbines marketed under the banner Windane in the 1980s. DWT’s nomenclature used the model’s rotor diameter as the distinguishing mark, as well it should be. For example, the Windane 12 was a two-blade, downwind wind turbine with a 12 meter diameter rotor, and the Windane 34 was a 34-meter diameter wind turbine with a three-blade rotor upwind of the tower.
While the Danish wind industry grew out of the private sector, mostly companies in agriculture or small machine shops, DWT was funded by the Danish government.
DWT’s small household-size turbines were unusual in that they used only two blades and the rotor was downwind of the tower at a time when the Danish wind industry exclusively used three-blade rotors upwind of the tower.
I have no idea how many of the Windane 12 turbine were installed worldwide. I photographed two of them on the beach of the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, India in 1987.
21 were installed by Arbutus on Pajuela Peak north of Hwy 58 in the Tehachapi Pass in 1986. This version used a 13.5 meter diameter rotor sweeping 144 square meters of the wind stream. They did not fare well in the rugged Tehachapi Pass. By 1987 there were only 14 remaining.
In 1990 DWT installed 35 of the Windane 34, a 400 kW wind turbine in the San Gorgonio Pass. At the time this was the largest commercial wind turbine in the world.
More Windane 34s were installed in Great Britain. Peter Edward’s used ten of them on his project in Cornwall, the first commercial wind farm in the country. Renewable Energy Systems also used them in several projects in England, including a dramatic project overlooking Morecambe Bay in the Lake District.
