Image: Enercon
“I have had a feel for wind and water since I was a child. I
grew up in Dithmarschen on the coast of the North Sea, 11 kilo-
metres from the dyke.” At first glance, Holger Hennings is a quiet,
contemplative man, who likes the open, unbroken landscape of
north Germany. From the age of nine he had the North Sea wind
in his sails and has loved the interplay between wind and water.
Generating electricity from power in the air caught his interest
at 14. During a holiday on Sylt in 1976, he discovered aircraft
construction engineer Hans-Dietrich Goslich’s pioneering equip-
ment. “That was the spark – a unit with a counter-rotating rotor –
still a technical challenge today,” recalls the qualified mechanical
engineer with accuracy. Hennings sought out literature on wind
power turbines and devoured the few books available at the time
on the subject of renewable energies.
Pioneer spirit and shattered dreams
At the same time – at the end of the seventies – scientists
at the research centre in Jülich were planning the construction
of Growian (GRoss-WIndANlage), the large wind turbine, under
the leadership of the German Federal Ministry of Research – a
response to the oil price shock in the early 1970s. In 1983, at
the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Koog in Dithmarschen, with its 100.4-metre-
diameter rotor and three megawatt nominal output, Growian
was the largest wind energy facility in operation in the world.
However, it was very soon apparent that a facility of this size could
not be controlled using the technology of the day. Growian did
not once achieve sustained test operation and was ultimately
more of an argument against the use of wind energy.
But not all the pioneers or those involved were discouraged,
recalls Hennings. At that time, a couple of mechanical engineering
companies were manufacturing wind energy turbines in manage-
able dimensions, including MAN (Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-
Nürnberg). In parallel with Growian, the company was devel-
oping AeroMAN, a significantly smaller machine with a rotor
diameter of 12 metres, of which several hundred examples had
been built worldwide and were being operated successfully.
PORTRAIT
|
DLR
ma
G
azıne
138
·
139
|
41
The man who set forth
to capture the wind
Holger Hennings was one of the first people to show an interest in wind power. He followed the failure of the large
Growian science project and saw how wind power turbines went on to become a surprising success. Today, Hennings
works at the DLR site in Göttingen, making wind power turbines safer and more efficient to operate.
Holger Hennings – a man with a feel for wind and science
Holger Hennings has had a feel for wind and water since he was a child in
Dithmarschen in northern Germany. Understanding wind energy turbines
better and improving them is what still motivates the engineer.
Mounting the stator on a wind energy turbine: today wind
energy is an important pillar in energy generation – using
hi-tech turbines from listed companies.
By Dorothee Bürkle
