In a recent article about the history of the modern British wind industry, I featured photos of the Wind Energy Group’s MS-2 and MS-3 wind turbines. (See In the Wake of Wind—the British Wind Story.) I thought that was the end of that. WEG died decades ago.
But no, keen-eyed Giacomo Piovano and Rushane Perera put me on the trail of more British wind history—alive at least through March 2025 on Cold Northcott in Cornwall.
One of WEG’s early contracts with National Wind Power, the company began operating 19 of a planned 24 MS-3 turbines on Cold Northcutt in April 1993.[1] Subsequently, WEG added three more turbines, bringing the total to 22 of the 300 kW, 33-meter diameter machines.
In 1992 WEG planned to add a stretched version of the MS-3 turbine rated at 400 kW. This was intended as the 22nd of the 22 units on Cold Northcutt. I wrote at the time that “Like its predecessor, the MS-3, the WEG 400 will feature a two blade, upwind, teetering rotor. The rotor, however, has been stretched to 35.4 meters. WEG has also modified the tips and trailing edges to reduce aerodynamic noise.” An earlier prototype had been operating at the National Engineering Laboratory’s Myres Hill test site south of Glasgow, Scotland.[2]
As of March 2025 when Google last updated their satellite images, the turbines were still standing on Cold Northcutt, and a least a portion of the turbines may have still been in service.[3] If so, the long-lived project was in operation for more than three decades. This is comparable to the twenty WEG MS-2 turbines that were in operation for nearly 30 years in California’s Altamont Pass.[4]
In 2016, the Cold Northcott turbines were taken out of service for six months when one of the machines lost a rotor. 20 turbines were later returned to service. That’s the most recent date that I can find when the wind turbines were operating.
WEG’s turbine were to be finally removed this summer in a repowering with a clone of the Lagerwey direct-drive turbine with a rotor 61 meters in diameter rated at 1 MW.[5]
Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos identified as Cold Northcott. I was there, I am sure, when I visited Peter Edward’s Delabole project, the first wind farm in Britain. If I remember correctly it was so foggy I could hardly see the turbines on Cold Northcott.
[1] Paul Gipe, “WEG Opens Cemmaes,” Wind Energy Weekly, December 8, 1992, and “Cold Northcott,” Wikipedia, February 4, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_Northcott&oldid=1336516793.
[2] Paul Gipe, “WEG Launches Larger Turbine,” Wind Energy Weekly, September 20, 1992.
[3] Cold Northcott Cornwall WEG MS-3, March 2025, Google Earth.
[4] Paul Gipe, “In the Wake of Wind—the British Wind Story,” History of Wind Power, WIND WORKS, June 10, 2026, https://wind-works.org/in-the-wake-of-wind-the-british-wind-story/.
[5] Repowering and Replacement Of Cold Northcott Wind Farm Environmental Impact Assessment Volume 3: Non-Technical Summary (2023), 38, https://docs.planning.org.uk/20231129/5/RSE355FGKFL00/u22mv3rjj69k8dhb.pdf.
