ABSTRACT
Back in 1900, some 18,000 traditional windmills were still in operation in Germany. They were mainly used to produce flour. But over the decades, they were gradually replaced by electrical equipment. In the 1980s, modern wind power began. These wind turbines are no longer mechanical windmills, but rather power generators. In Germany, the new age of wind power started off with a disaster. In the Growian project, the German Ministry of Research and Technology wanted to set a new record. The Growian wind turbine had a rated output of 3MW, some 55 times larger than the biggest serially produced wind turbines back then and six times bigger than the largest test wind turbine in Denmark – and German engineers did not have nearly as much experience as their Danish colleagues. Growian was quickly decommissioned because of technical problems.
