The world’s tallest wooden wind turbine is nearly complete — and its creators say it makes wind power way more efficient

“Wood enables building higher towers at a lower cost.”

By Rick KazmerDecember 1, 2023

The experts at Sweden’s Modvion are using the strength of wood to help capture the power of wind — and setting records in the process. 

The company’s unique, wood-based wind turbine was ordered by Sweden-based energy company Varberg Energi, and will be the world’s tallest wooden turbine when completed. It will stand at 344 feet including the blades, per an Electrek report on the news. Still under construction, the record-breaker is set for completion by the end of this year in Skara, Sweden. 

The company is also touting other benefits of the wood design, in addition to height. 

Modvion experts said on the company website that the laminated wood used to build the structure is stronger and lighter than steel, when part of the turbine structure. 

Photos on the company’s website show cranes stacking wooden cylinders that make the tower. The cylinders are divided into several semicircular parts, which are combined on-site. Since the turbine tower parts are hollow, the walls can be made thicker, increasing the strength. 

The modular wood design uses glue during assembly, instead of a heap of bolts. In short, the concept maximizes the strength of natural wood fibers, its builders said. 

“We’re bringing to market the next generation of tall towers in engineered wood, nature’s own carbon (fiber),” Modvion CEO Otto Lundman said on the company’s website. 

The Modvion team said that height matters when it comes to catching wind. As part of a point-by-point benefit guide, they claim the wood towers more efficiently reach the sky than other types, reducing cost. The reason, in part, is due to the fact that they don’t need as much reinforcement to support their own weight. The lighter materials also make for easier transport.

Modvion’s builders use Scandinavian spruce, which they said grows fast enough to overcome logging.

“Wood enables building higher towers at a lower cost, which makes wind power more efficient since winds are stronger and more stable higher up,” Lundman told Electrek. 

The team said wooden towers will contribute 90% less dirty air during their lifespan than their metal counterparts. When decommissioned, the intent is for the turbines to be reused in other construction projects, according to Modvion’s website.

The company already has a proven prototype in Björkö, an island in Sweden. It was built in 2020. Two other projects are in the works, including Varberg’s. 

“Modvion’s tower enables the construction of cost-effective, tall wind turbines — a key to a carbon-neutral energy system,” Varberg CEO Björn Sjöström said.

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Nannie Helen Burroughs

Around 1880, Nannie Helen Burroughs was born to a formerly enslaved couple living in Orange, Virginia. Her father died when she was young, and she and her mother relocated to Washington, DC. Burroughs excelled in school and graduated with honors from M Street High School (now Paul Laurence Dunbar High School). Despite her academic achievements, Burroughs was turned down for a Washington D.C. public school teaching position. Some historians speculate that the elite Black community discriminated against Burroughs because she had darker skin. Undeterred, Burroughs decided to open her own school to educate and train poor, working African American women.
Burroughs proposed her school initiative to the National Baptist Convention (NBC). In response, the organization purchased six acres of land in Northeast Washington, D.C. Now Burroughs needed money to construct the school. She did not, however, have unanimous support. Civil rights leader Booker T. Washington did not believe African Americans would donate money to found the school. But Burroughs did not want to rely on money from wealthy white donors. Relying on small donations from Black women and children from the community, Burroughs managed to raise enough money to open the National Training School for Women and Girls.

Even though some people disagreed with teaching women skills other than domestic work, the school was popular in the first half of the 20th century. The school originally operated out of a small farm house. In 1928, a larger building named Trades Hall was constructed. The hall housed twelve classrooms, three offices, an assembly area and a print shop.

In addition to founding the National Training School for Women and Girls, Burroughs also advocated for greater civil rights for African Americans and women. At the time, Black women had few career choices. Many did domestic work like cooking and cleaning. Burroughs believed women should have the opportunity to receive an education and job training. She wrote about the need for Black and white women to work together to achieve the right to vote. She believed suffrage for African American women was crucial to protect their interests in an often discriminatory society.

Burroughs died in May 1961. She never married and she devoted her life to the education of Black women. In 1964, the school was renamed the Nannie Helen Burroughs School in her honor. Burroughs defied societal restrictions placed on her gender and race and her work foreshadowed the main principles of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The Trades Hall, now a National Historic Landmark, is the last physical legacy of her lifelong pursuit for worldwide racial and gender equality.

To learn more visit: https://www.nps.gov/…/africanamericanheri…/education.htm