Country's largest windmill under construction in Oulu

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Construction and installation work on Finland's largest, three-megawatt wind power generator began on an island fronting Oulu on Thursday.
      The height of the windmill is 90 metres, and the rotors also measure 90 metres in diameter. The tips of the rotors reach an altitude of 135 metres.
      The machinery and rotor blades of the windmill will be installed on Friday. Electricity production will then commence, with the estimated annual output of the windmill at 6,900 megawatt hours. This amount is equivalent to the consumption of around 500 single-family homes with electric heating.
      The total capacity of Finland's existing wind generators is 85 megawatts, with the most common windmill size at 0.6 megawatts.
     
Wind energy accounts for some 0.2 percent of Finland's electricity consumption. In order to replace the new nuclear power plant that is being built in Olkiluoto, 1,600 windmills would be needed.
      Windmills have been going up in Finland since 1991, and the Oulu windmill is the country's 91st. The cost of the project is 3.2 million euros, 40 percent of which was in the form of a subsidy from the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
      The windmill was delivered by Winwind, a young Oulu-based company, which has a 0.1-percent slice of the global windmill market. It utilises new German technology, which allows for the machinery to be compressed into a much smaller space than was previously possible.
      Georg Böhmeke, the German engineer who designed the new technology, laments that the promotion of wind energy continues to meet with more obstacles in Finland than in Germany.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  High electricity price improves profitability of wind power (26.8.2003)

Helsingin Sanomat