GIGANTIC WIND TOWERS MAY SOON PROVIDE CHEAP ELECTRICITY

Wanganui Chronicle, 3 May 1949, Page 5

GIGANTIC WIND TOWERS MAY SOON PROVIDE CHEAP ELECTRICITY

(By Guy Bettany, a Reuter Correspondent in Hamburg.) Gigantic wind towers rising nearly 1,000 feet into the air witn wind wheels over 500 feet in diameter may turn the landscape of the future into into a Wellsian dream if Herr Hermann Honnef, a German engineer, has his way. Herr Honnef dreams of harnessing the winds to produce cheap electric power on a large scale, thereby saving millions of tons of ’ coal and oil a year. Well-known in Germany as the Architect of Tall Buildings—one of the most famous is the 888 feet Berlin Radio Tower—Herr Honnei has proposed the construction on the banks of Lake Seienter, Fast of Kiel, of a large electricity works to be driven mainly by power derived from the winds. He has submitted his plan, complete with all drawings and specifications, to the Schleswig Holstein Government. It is estimated to cost between £450,000 and £600,000 sterling. The plan is now being examined by a committee of 14 experts comprising engineers, scientists, economists and financiers. In his efforts, Herr Honnef has a sympathetic and influential backer in Herr Karl Luedermann, the Premier of Schleswig Holstein, himself an engineer, who is anxious to find a solution for the extensive unemployment in his State due to the enormous influx of refugees from Eastern Germany. Cheap electricity would, it is believed, enable Schleswig Holstein to be industrialised and to absorb hundreds of thousands of workers. Under Herr Honnef’s plan, that energy would be derived from turbines driven by wind wheels erected on a number of tall steel masts, each 867 feet high and constructed on the same principles as the Eiffel Tower which has stood the stresses of wind and weather for 60 years. The wheels would be about 530 feet in diameter. That this ambitious plan is not purely an engineer’s dream on tile drawing board is.shown by the fact that Herr Honnef has already built eight smaller wind-driven electricity plants in various parts of Germany. To supplement the output of electricity, Herr Honnef proposes to combine his wind-driven electricity works with a hydro-electric station. The

wind wheels, in addition to producing electricity themselves, would j pump water continuously. Backers believe that Herr Honnef's combined wind and water driven electricity works would bo so commercially suc--1 cessful that repayments of tlie loan necessary for its construction could start after three years. Asked for his own views upon the prospects of his plan, Herr Honnef said: “My ideas will arouse many enemies, like all new projects which involve revolui tionary changes; but sooner or later it will be successful throughout the world.”