Qualla: Growian https://qualla.com/growian en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:25:41 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/w/6/growian-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Growian https://qualla.com/growian Growian: Introduction https://qualla.com/growian/ Photo credit Thyge Weller, CC BY-SA 4.0. The agreement to scrap it was signed before anyone poured the foundation. In the basic contract of 3 January 1978, the partners behind Growian wrote down that when the project concluded, the installation was anticipated to be dismantled and scrapped. Five and a half years later a 100-metre machine stood on the flat reclaimed land of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Koog, on the Schleswig-Holstein coast near Marne, and it was the largest wind turbine in the world. It operated, in total, for about 420 hours. Then it came down, exactly as written.

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Image: Thyge Weller | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/w/6/growian-wp/u1w6-growian-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Growian: Big for the Sake of Big https://qualla.com/growian/ Photo credit 4028mdk09, CC BY-SA 3.0. Growian is a compression of Große Windenergieanlage — large wind energy installation — and the name is the whole design philosophy. The rotor spanned 100.4 metres and turned at roughly 19.5 revolutions per minute on a hub 100 metres up. Rated output was 3,000 kilowatts, the highe...

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Image: 4028mdk09 | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/w/6/growian-wp/u1w6-growian-big-for-the-sake-of-big.mp3 0:06 2 full Growian: The Wrong Way Round https://qualla.com/growian/ Photo credit 4028mdk09, CC BY-SA 3.0. Two blades, not three. And the rotor mounted downwind of the tower rather than upwind — a lee runner, in the German phrase — so that each blade passed through the tower's wind shadow once per revolution and got hit with a sudden load drop and recovery. To absorb that, the designe...

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Image: 4028mdk09 | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/w/6/growian-wp/u1w6-growian-the-wrong-way-round.mp3 0:06 3 full Growian: Four Hundred and Twenty Hours https://qualla.com/growian/ Photo credit 4028mdk09, CC BY-SA 3.0. The first test run came on 6 July 1983, with official commissioning on 4 October. Between then and the end of operations in August 1987, the machine spent the overwhelming majority of its life standing still. Add up every hour the rotor actually turned under load and it comes to ...

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Image: 4028mdk09 | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/w/6/growian-wp/u1w6-growian-four-hundred-and-twenty-hours.mp3 0:06 4 full Growian: Everyone Got What They Wanted https://qualla.com/growian/ Photo credit 4028mdk09, CC BY-SA 3.0. The uncomfortable part of the Growian story is that failure was not universally unwelcome. Overall and technical direction rested with the utility HEW, commercial management with Schleswag, and the federal research ministry paid. Some of the partners were, at best, ambivalent. Gü...

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Image: 4028mdk09 | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/w/6/growian-wp/u1w6-growian-everyone-got-what-they-wanted.mp3 0:06 5 full Growian: What Grew Back https://qualla.com/growian/ Photo credit 4028mdk09, CC BY-SA 3.0. The koog did not stay empty. In 1988, the year after Growian shut down for good, Germany's first wind farm opened on the same reclaimed polder: the Windenergiepark Westküste, thirty turbines producing around 19 million kilowatt-hours a year. They were small machines, individually...

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]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/w/6/growian-wp/u1w6-growian-what-grew-back.mp3 0:06 6 full