Last week (Wednesday, September, 30th), I was permitted to see how a windmill-powered plant was erected. My friend and our photographer Rolo Zoller came along.
It was not just some windmill, but the biggest in Bavaria! The location is on the Kienberg near Rennertshofen, very close to the property of Herbert Kugler, the Bavarian wind-energy pioneer.
You can find a very interesting report on the Kienberg windmill-powered plant in the “Donaukurier”.
The lower windmill tower consists of concrete rings that narrow. Then there are some metal rings. At a height of around 80 metres, a slim tube is added. It will support the generator and the rotor hub at a height of 100 metres.
The tower is about 13 metres in diameter on the ground, and still around two metres at the top, near the generator housing. From bottom to top, the windmill is 138 metres high, and it costs around 3 million Euros.
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The power plant is supposed to provide an annual average of 4.2 million kilowatt hours of electricity at 2 megawatt engine output.
If the windmill had been permitted more height, it would have been possible to achieve up to 30 % more output.
I found it quite exciting when the crane put the top onto the already 80 metres-high tower.
Afterwards, the machine housing was constructed at a height of far more than a hundred metres.
The generator and the rotor blades had to wait. That gave me more time to admire the truly impressive rotor blades as they sat on the transportation vehicles.
On the whole, this was a really interesting afternoon. I learned a lot.
I was also surprised to hear that the company Enercon (building and servicing windmills) had started in a garage in 1989. Today, they have more than 20,000 employees.
At 7.9 cents per kilowatt hour, the money you get for wind energy is currently a lot less than what you would get for energy gained through other federally sponsored sources under the ecology act.
For solar energy, for instance, the law says that you get 48.1 Cent/kWh!
At the end of our visit, the family Kugler invited us to a cup of coffee. The “Zwetschgendatschi” was just as supreme as the cordial welcome of the hosts.
On our way home, we passed the almost finished windmill.
Many thanks to the Kugler family!
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
I took the pictures last Wednesday with my small Rollei.
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