New ideas from Germany’s professor of wind energy

Model wind generators ranging from palmtop to man-sized fill the office of Germany’s first and only professor of wind energy, Martin Kuehn, at the University of Stuttgart.

One, out of Lego bricks and depicting an offshore wind-park, was made by Kuehn’s young son. Kuehn himself was fascinated as a boy by the power of the wind, though his interest in building wind generators did not come till he was an adult.
‘Nature creates a constantly changing challenge for us,’ says Kuehn, 43. ‘We devise ways to exploit wind, which is inherently gusty, in a constant and efficient way, in harmony with nature.’

German makers of wind-power equipment are among the world leaders, with German engineers constantly refining the technology.

‘The market is booming worldwide,’ says Kuehn. ‘It is expanding by 20 per cent a year.’ Last year, world sales of equipment totalled more than 11 billion euros, with German makers capturing somewhat more than one third of that.

‘Of course we are far from the sales volumes of the German automobile industry, but wind-turbine constructors are well out of the stage of being a back-garage industry,’ he says.

Monsters and Critics