WIND POWER

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 252, 15 June 1932, Page 8

WIND POWER

AMBITIOUS GERMAN SCHEME TO GENERATE ELECTRIC POWER. WORLD 'S IIIGHEST TOWER "I shall build the highest tower of the world in Berlin and complete it before the end of this year." This statement was made by Herr Hermann Hennef, the famous German engineer, who is the constructor „ of Germany's wireless towers at Konigs Wusterhausen. "My Berlin tower will be the first wind power station for generating electric current of 50,000.000 kilowatts a year," said Herr Hennef. "It will be 1200 feet high and have five wind wheels of 240 feet diameter. No tower of its kind exists in the world, but I hope it will be soon followed by numbers of similar towers all over Germany. "Such a wind power station produces the cheapest electric current imaginable. One kilowatt hour of current, which costs 2ad in Beilin, will cost no more than a quarter of a farthing — a 40th of what it costs now." , . , , Herr Hennef said that he had^had worked on the propject for many years, and finally put a memorandum before President von Hindenburg on the occasion of the German Prosperity Conference in November, 1931. The President handed the document, which is a voluminous hook, to the Minister of Traffic for expert opinion. Government Favourable The reports were so much in favour of the project that the Government decided to have .it carried out as quickly as possible. "The cost of the Berlin wind power

station will be £150,000 and the running costs, including interest "for the capital invested and costs of renewals, will be about £12,000 a year," observed Herr Hennef. "This is little expense for an electric power plant of its capacity. j "My special idea," he said, "is that German farmers should be supplied with current so cheaply that they will be able to do their work by electricity at less cost than by using workmen and horses. "The project includes electric heating of the soil. Experiments have proved that through electric heating, during the night, the soil becomes at least five times as fertile as it is under ordinary farming. "Then there is another point: The production of hydrogen, There will be plenty of surplus current during the hours of the day and" night when only a small quantity of current is needed for ordinary purposes. "This surplus could be used for the production of hydrogen to drive engines."