Powering the Dream_ The History and Promise of Green Technology - Alexis Madrigal [124]
Innovation researchers also argue that the country’s wind program privileged learning-by-doing over the kind of top-down scientific research program that the EPRI-Kenetech collaboration epitomized. The industry grew out of just a few local manufacturers before metastasizing into a larger industry supported by the government’s testing services.43
The American companies getting smoked in the field were impressed by the Danish. The Risø test station established by the Danish government drew particular praise for its position in making turbines better. “The test station has played a major role in helping the Danishbuilt turbines establish an international reputation for reliability, and is widely regarded as a model of wise and productive use of government funds in promoting alternative energy,” wrote one observer.44
Meanwhile, the American companies were betting on the Next Big Thing, the one development that would allow them to cut costs dramatically and unlock a huge, new market. “American designers constantly sought breakthroughs,” Paul Gipe, a leading wind researcher, has written. “They wanted to bypass the drudgery of incremental development and bat a home run.”45
Zond was an exception. Their heavily promoted 1995 machine, the Z-40, was basically a knock-off of the Vestas turbines that the company had been using for its projects. The company admitted as much with the popular press, noting that it was a Vestas “with a few improvements,” 46 that is, a simple three-bladed turbine that was heavy and built to face the wind. Because they worked, Zond built one on that design.
Instead of plowing money into a massive turbine R&D program, the company put its money into an extensive data gathering system codesigned with the Department of Energy. They created a special test stand set-up that recalled the testing rig that Thomas Perry used to design his famous “scientific windmill.” A nine hundred–horsepower diesel engine subjected the wind turbine to forces equivalent to a hurricane. A shaft running from the engine to the gearbox pounded the components, inflicting thirty years worth of damage in just six months.47
Kenetech likewise sought fundamental changes in the cost structure of a wind turbine so they could hit that magical five-cents a kilowatt mark. Consequently, it had to be lighter . . . and capture more wind . . . and be more reliable . . . and less prone to other types of failure . . . and provide better power to the grid. That’s a long list of tough problems.
To get the machines to look cheap enough on paper, Kenetech was forced to cut corners on reliability while simultaneously projecting a turbine life of thirty years.48 Considering that few wind turbines had survived even a few years, let alone a decade, the estimate shows how desperate Kenetech was to say that it had a machine that would compete with fossil fuels without subsidies.
All across the wind industry, insiders were betting against Kenetech’s new wind turbine. Jamie Chapman, a former vice president of the company, pointed out that “if there were an obvious answer” to wind’s problems, “it would spread like wildfire.” Presciently, Chapman warned that turbine efficiency was only one aspect of the overall performance of a machine. Operating and maintenance costs could swamp the benefits of getting the 10 percent boost from the variable speed rotor. 49 Maybe if they changed a turbine too much, it would break.
BUBBLE BURST
On July 29, 1994, Hank Hermann, a wind energy consultant and analyst, visited the new Buffalo Ridge wind farm in Minnesota, which was stocked with brand spanking new 33M-VS turbines. The company was still riding high, with that $1 billion valuation and what the company