COMMENT
Business Buzz
with Harry Pearson
Boffin’ s windpower plan wasn’ t just hot air
Meet the villagers who turned down the world’ s first wind turbine because they believed electricity was‘ the devil’ s work’...
Anybody who has spent time on the banks of the Tees knows that when it comes to the wind, our region has an abundance of resources.
“ We always called it the‘ lazy wind’,” my dad, who’ d spent many freezing hours at Cleveland Bridge, Port Clarence, used to say.“ It couldn’ t be bothered to go round you, so it just went straight through you.”
My grandad, who cycled to work from Marske to Billingham via the coast road, had another name for the wind. But there may be children reading, so we won’ t repeat it here.
As you’ ll read elsewhere in this issue in the feature about PD Ports, harvesting Teesside’ s wind( stop sniggering at the back!) has become a vital part of the region’ s economy.
Wilton Engineering, which built 340-tonne towers for the Hornsea Wind Farm, and LM Wind Power factory, which will be building the 107m-long turbine blades for the Haliade-X wind platform at Dogger Bank, are just two of the local firms involved.
The Haliade project is set to generate enough electricity to power six million homes( or 5,999,999, if my daughter has her hairdryer and her straighteners on at the same time – honestly, she sets the smart metre clicking like a flamenco dancer’ s castanets).
It’ s one part of the UK government’ s commitment to getting offshore capacity up to 60 gigawatts by the year 2030.
The new importance of wind power is proof that, when it comes to business, you can never write anything off( though I guess the fax machine is unlikely to make a comeback – unless, of course, some young hipster discovers it and decides it’ s the vinyl LP of person-toperson communication).
Around 5000BC, the Ancient Egyptians invented the sail and from then on over the next six-and-ahalf millennia, wind was the commonest and most popular form of power for everything from grinding corn to pumping water and from artesian wells via circumnavigating the globe.
Sailing by – Teesside firms are helping build some of the world’ s biggest wind farms – but not everyone spotted wind power’ s potential straight away.
A new use for canvas sails was discovered by the Scots boffin Professor James Blyth in 1887. He built the world’ s first wind turbine at his holiday cottage in Marykirk and was soon generating so much electricity he offered to provide streetlights for the entire village.
The villagers turned him down, however, apparently believing electricity was“ the devil’ s work”( a view I tend to echo when I get my energy bill – damn those straighteners).
Blyth’ s invention and its subsequent refinement by Americans Daniel Halladay and Charles Brush might have offered a glimpse of the future, but by then most people were convinced that fossil fuels were the way forward.
In a new age of steam engines and then internal combustion motors, windmill builders and sail-makers stood idly around, looking as forlorn as bleeper salesmen at a smartphone convention.
The only nation where that wasn’ t true was Denmark. Here they remained faithful to the energy-generating windmill. During the Victorian era the Danes continued to train“ wind prospectors”, men whose job it was to travel around countryside with a huge spruce pole that they could climb up to test for areas where the breeze was at its stiffest and most abundant.
As early as 1895, the Danes were using windmills to produce electricity to light hospitals and schools. Over a century later, the UK – officially the windiest place in Europe( you can insert your own balti joke here …) – started to come round to the Danish way of thinking.
The first turbine locked into our national grid was erected in the Orkney Islands in 1951. The first wind farm proper was built at Delabole, Cornwall, 40 years after that.
Today there are around 11,500 wind turbines in the UK, generating 30 % of our electricity.
What once appeared to be the redundant technology of a bygone era – a clockwork car in a PlayStation world – is now at the forefront of a new industrial revolution.
Just as in the first one, Teesside is playing a vital role.
Harry Pearson’ s latest book The Farther Corner – A Sentimental Return to North-East Football is out now.
134 | Tees Business