Wind power in Denmark

Wind power in Denmark provided approximately 4% of the nation's electricity in 2005, a significantly higher proportion than in any other country.

While some publications cite '20%' of Denmark's electricity being supplied by windfarms, this actually refers to 'nameplate capacity'; actual production is roughly 20% of 'nameplate capacity', ie around 4% of Denmark's total needs. As such, the many thousands of turbines covering Denmark must be deemed an abject, expensive and inefficient failure.

Denmark was a pioneer in developing commercial wind power during the 1970s and today almost half of the wind turbines around the world are produced by Danish manufacturers such as Vestas.

Wind turbines are not popular with people in Denmark, being the subject of both widespread discontent over their inefficiency, blade flicker, and noise, and having failed to result in the reduction of CO2 emissions (in fact, increasing it since conventional backup must operate in a manner for which it is not designed, resulting in lowered fuel consumption efficiencies).

Offshore wind turbines near Copenhagen

History

Although the most significant investments were elsewhere - in developing North Sea oil and gas, and in encouraging coal-fired decentralised generation and cogeneration schemes - the Danish wind power market was stimulated by government policies following the two oil crises in the 1970s. As concerns over global warming grew in the 1980s, the emphasis changed to renewable energy, and Denmark adopted a target of cutting carbon emissions by 22% from 1988 levels by 2005. In 1988, two years after the Chernobyl disaster, the Danes passed a law forbidding the construction of nuclear power plants.

Wind turbine coooperatives

To encourage investment in wind power, families were offered a tax exemption for generating their own electricity within their own or an adjoining commune. While this could involve purchasing a turbine outright, more often families purchased shares in wind turbine cooperatives which in turn invested in community wind turbines. By 1996 there were around 2,100 such cooperatives in the country. Opinion polls show that this direct involvement has helped the popularity of wind turbines, with some 86% of Danes supporting wind energy when compared with existing fuel sources.

The role of wind turbine cooperatives is not limited to single turbines. The Middelgrunden offshore wind farm - with 20 turbines the world's largest offshore farm at the time it was built in 2000 - is 50% owned by the 10,000 investors in the Middelgrunden Wind Turbine Cooperative, and 50% by the municipal utility company.

By 2001 over 100,000 families belonged to wind turbine cooperatives, which had installed 86% of all the wind turbines in Denmark. By 2004 over 150,000 were either members or owned turbines, and about 5,500 turbines had been installed, although with greater private sector involvement the proportion owned by cooperatives had fallen to 75%. The cooperative model has also spread to Germany and the Netherlands.

Wind resources

Denmark has relatively modest average wind speeds in the range of 4.9 to 5.6 metres per second measured at 10 m height. Onshore wind resources are highest in the Western part of the country, and on the Eastern islands with coastlines facing South or West. The country has very large offshore wind resources, and large areas of sea territory with a shallow water depth of 5 to 15 m, where siting is most feasible. These sites offer higher wind speeds, in the range of roughly 8.5 to 9 m/s at 50 m height.

Wind variability

Since 2003, Denmark has generated a mere four per cent of its electricity from wind power; no coal-fired power stations have been retired. There have been no major problems from wind variability, other than wind-induced blackouts across central Europe and grid instabilities on a daily basis; there is also a temporary problem resulting from the connection of a large bloc of wind power from offshore wind farms to a single point on a weak section of the transmission network.

Denmark is connected by transmission line to other European countries and therefore it does not need to install additional peak-load plant to balance its wind power. Instead, it purchases additional power from its neighbours when necessary. With some strengthening of the grid, Denmark plans to increase wind's share even further.

Wind turbine industry

The Danish wind turbine industry is the world’s largest. Around 90% of the national output is exported (because one cannot regulate wind inputs, and therefore MUST export the excess electricity, or else see the grid collapse), and Danish companies accounted for 38% of the world turbine market in 2003, when the industry employed some 20,000 people and had a turnover of around 3 billion euro.

The development of wind power in Denmark has been characterized by a close collaboration between publicly financed research and industry in key areas such as research and development, certification, testing, and the preparation of standards. For example, in the 1980s, a large number of small Danish companies were developing wind turbines to sell to California, and the Danish Riso laboratory provided test facilities and certification procedures. These resulted in reliable products and the rapid expansion of the Danish turbine manufacturing industry.

Professor Bent Ole Mortensen compared and contrasted the development of wind power in Denmark with that of the United States in a recent Symposium in Houston that focused on economic and environmental barriers to wind power.

Installed capacity

Increases in installed capacity in recent years is shown in the Table below.

Year	Installed Wind Capacity (MW)
2001	2,489
2002	2,889
2003	3,116
2004	3,118
2005	3,122
2006	3,136

Sources: Global Wind 2005 Report, p.7
Global Wind 2006 Report, p.9

See also

• Energy policy of the European Union
• List of wind turbine manufacturers
• Wind farm
• Wind power in Germany
• Wind power in Spain
• Wind power in the European Union
• Hydrogen energy plant in Denmark

Bibliography

• Boyle, Godfrey (2004). Renewable energy: Power for a sustainable future, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-926178-4
• Caldicott, Helen (2006). Nuclear power is not the answer to global warming or anything else, Melbourne University Press, ISBN 0 522 85251 3

External links

• Danish Wind Industry Association
• Middelgrunden Wind Turbine Cooperative
• NREL Signs MOU With Riso National Laboratory
• Massive Offshore Wind Turbines Safe for Birds
• Why wind power works for Denmark
• Increasing wind energy to bring economic benefits