But....I believe you grossly underestimate the investment it requires to get to the point where something is actually offered for sale. Funding an enterprise when there is already a working prototype and a sales brochure may SEEM like brave investment strategy, but compared to the folks who got the project to that place, such investment is virtually irrelevant.
Or perhaps you could explain to the rest of us exactly WHY there is no USA version of Vestas. There are no parts of wind turbines we could not have manufactured, but aside from some pathetic attempts, it never happened. "Remember the I35W bridge--who needs terrorists when there are Republicans"
You make a good point about the Danish farmers and machinists who actually built the early turbines. They did bootstrap themselves into becoming companies. Vestas was already a company, making something for agriculture when I visited the factory in Lem back in 1879, or was it 1979, can't quite remember.
btw, Here's a site on windpower's history put together by an old friend of mine, the builder of the blades for all those initial Danish machines.
As to your 2nd question, part of the reason the US never developed viable manufacturers can be laid at the hands of the government research program. Large machine contracts were awarded to defense industry companies who didn't give a shit about windpower. The small turbine companies scuffled along as best they could. But even the commercial turbines at the same scale as Vestas in those days were a bit higher technology, and were perhaps too far ahead of the curve. As we all know, the robust, primitive technology of the Danes won out.
It took some time before NREL (then SERI) got with the program, but by then it was too late. Another factor was the continual boom and bust cycles, which did not allow for long term investment. Look at Zond/Enron, who never built a reliably working machine. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
In order to build something as difficult as a reliable wind turbine, two things are required--a compelling vision and patient capital.
Pirate capitalism has neither. Good producers have both.
Wind turbines may not be the best example of these phenomena but it is one I thought appropriate for this site. "Remember the I35W bridge--who needs terrorists when there are Republicans"
Hope you enjoyed Eric's windpower site (above comment). I think it's gorgeous and a great template of the industry. Wish lot's of people would go there and check it out. He's the perfect example of the antidote for pirate capitalism. (But then some of us did do it for the greater good, and not because there was so much money to be made... which really hurt the industry.) "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
Without this kind of government-funded research programmes, it is highly unlikely that the Danish wind industry would have ever gotten off the ground. And considering the sway that the drill-and-burn lobby holds over Washington in general and the Repugs in particular, I seriously doubt that such a programme would have survived past the first US Congress committee.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Also, of course, the fact that support has been yanked away, and has generally been inconsistent (sse still today the on/off nature of the PTC mechanism and the yearly uncertainty as to its renewal). In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
