ABSTRACT
In the seventies various activities were started in Germany in order to develop modern wind power plants. The aim was to respond to the so-called oil price crisis. By the end of the eighties the technology had been steadily improved but market penetration remained very low. This started to change during the early nineties. Due to an intensive political promotion programme wind energy utilization increased. The German Government has promoted many wind energy utilization projects since the seventies. But until 1989 the total installed wind turbine capacity increased very slowly and reached only 20 MW. A new phase of wind energy development was initiated in 1989 with The 250 MW Wind Programme. The purpose of this programme was to carry out comprehensive test and demonstration activities on an industrial scale. With accompanying scientific measurements and evaluations various useful statistical data were collected for further improvement of the state of the art.
