Technical, economic and legal aspects of wind energy utilization

New, in particular renewable, sources of energy, when combined with a more conventional form of energy distribution such as the electric grid, pose a number of technical, safety, economic and legal problems which for today's thermal power plants either do not exist or are considered to be solved. With the generation of electric energy by means of medium and large wind energy converters we choose in the following analysis an example of some relevance to illustrate some of the difficulties that confront prospective commercial users with respect both to the assessment and to the actual construction of wind converters. As to relevance we remind the reader that world-wide at least a dozen prototypes of large wind energy converters are in operation, while many more are under construction varying in rotor diameter from 30 to 120 m and in installed generator capacity from 100 kW to 3000 kW. This review is based on studies and reports from international organizations and national industries in many industrialized countries [1-33], on our own work in this field [34-36] and on a continuous exchange of views with the utilities and industries involved.