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By Root 852 0

christened the 56-50. It was a disaster. Of the 557 early models, an almost unbelievable 95 percent of them failed in the field or had to be shut down because of danger.35 For that short period Cashman’s plan appeared to be a dismal failure. Then, however, it started to work, aided by the California Public Utilities Commission’s decision to come up with a series of standard contracts for PURPA-qualifying facilities. The Standard Offer 4 guaranteed wind farms payments pegged to fuel price projections that proved too high. The contracts became a boon to renewable energy developers like the solar company Luz and dozens of wind farmers. With a guaranteed price in play, the wind developers’ profits became pegged to the spread between the cost of making electricity and an inflated sale price.36 It worked like the feed-in tariffs that have driven much renewable energy development in Europe.37

There was a lot of money floating around for the company that could come up with a decent turbine. As a result, a lot of brilliant minds and smart technologists began to work on the problem of coming up with this better mousetrap. The competition got so fierce that the German turbine maker Enercon claims that the National Security Agency teamed up with Kenetech to steal their technology and patent it in the United States before Enercon could.38

With these forces at work, it’s no surprise that the machines did get better. Kenetech’s next turbine design, a hundred-kilowatt machine, was a major success. They were even as reliable as the Danish competitors, who had begun to make inroads in the California market. The secret of Kenetech’s success, though, wasn’t in their new machine’s off-the-shelf characteristics; rather, the tight coupling of their operations center with their maintenance teams—aided and abetted by better sensors and data—kept their machines running. They learned by doing. The longtime wind observer Asmus wrote,

No other wind developer put so much of its resources into integrating the real-time computer controls of each individual turbine with immediate, on-the-ground technical assistance. The windsmiths who worked for Kenetech became a key part of the company’s formula for success. They provided invaluable feedback about how each component fared under the very specific wind conditions and quirks of wind fuel supply at any one turbine site.39

Combining their new machine and operations model, they became the largest wind power developer in America and the Electric Power Research Institute’s preferred partner in creating the fancy new variable-speed turbine.

But they were not the only wind company in America or the world.

Kenetech may have been the highest-flying and the most public with their ambitions, but both Danish manufacturers and the American company Zond were working hard to make slightly better turbines that would be very reliable. Vestas, a Danish company that now leads the world in wind turbine sales, had developed a rugged set of machines that weighed five times as much as their American counterparts. Popular Science described the turbine, not quite approvingly, as “trusty as a tractor.” The other turbines, more American designs, were light and high-tech. The message was clear: The Danes were agricultural and old world whereas the Americans were aerospacey and forward looking.40

The Danish-style machines might have been heavy and more expensive on paper, but they did not have the disconcerting tendency of flying apart in tough wind conditions. In the early years, they nearly always outperformed their American competitors—and they continue to lead the world. Cashman said the Danes “saved his butt.”41

Furthermore, the Danish approach to engineering was fundamentally different from the American one. It was much more conservative, favoring incremental changes. Danish turbines had to pass rigorous testing to qualify for tax incentives in their country. The manufacturers did not want to mess around with reliability, so they made their machines sturdy. An academic report concluded that

Gradually, practical and