Page 41: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (August 2022)

Stiesdal’s 1978 turbine was made with wooden blades and a control system, both of which he built from scratch.

It was only retired in 1991 when the wood had rotted. y 2021, a total of 35 GW of offshore wind had became its CTO before “retiring in 2014” and then setting up been installed across the world. To meet global Stiesdal A/S in 2017. Throughout, his focus has been solving climate targets, the International Energy Agency problems. The ? rst was to alleviate the pressure of energy price (IEA) says that another 80 GW of it needs to be increases at his parents’ farm following the 1973 oil crisis with built per year by 2030. Henrik Stiesdal expresses that very ? rst turbine. Then, along with others, he started to see

B this target another way: “We need to do twice what we did in it as a national energy challenge. Since the late 1980s, it’s been the past 30 years, per year, by 2030.” increasingly about addressing the global climate challenge.

It sounds daunting, but this is an industry that has surprised many. Since Henrik built his ? rst wind turbine in 1978, he has Offshore Wind Firsts seen turbine rating grow by a factor of 1000 and growth is con- One of the ? rst major milestones was the ? rst offshore wind tinuing. There are limits, but also opportunities and urgency. farm. Building offshore had been talked about for well over a

Henrik Stiesdal is familiar with many of the challenges in- decade before Vindeby took shape, using 11, 450 kW Bonus volved. He is one of the wind industry’s major pioneers. The turbines designed by Stiesdal’s engineering department at Bo- turbine he built in 1978 was one of the ? rst. It was a horizontal nus. “Another milestone was when we built Middelgrunden axis, three blade turbine dubbed the “Danish concept”, which, outside Copenhagen in 2000,” says Stiesdal. “At 40MW, this after the design was sold to Vestas in 1979, kick-started and was the world’s biggest wind farm using (20) 2MW turbines.” then dominated the wind industry. But it was also unique because it was the ? rst to use turbines

From 1988, Stiesdal was CTO of Bonus Energy, which built designed for use offshore. Until then, modi? ed onshore tur- the ? rst offshore wind farm, Vindeby, offshore Denmark in bines had been used. The offshore turbines had better climate 1991. When Siemens Wind Power bought Bonus in 2004, he control, but they were also bigger than any permitted for on- www.marinelink.com 41

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