Denmark builds the world’s first offshore wind farm at Vindeby

Story: 1991 C.E.  |  Last updated: January 1, 1991

Eleven turbines. Eleven days. And an idea that almost nobody in the electricity industry took seriously.

In 1991 C.E., workers erected a cluster of wind turbines in the shallow waters off Vindeby, a small town on the Danish island of Lolland. The project was modest by almost any measure — 11 turbines, each producing 450 kilowatts, enough to power roughly 2,000 to 3,000 Danish households. But the Vindeby Offshore Wind Farm was unlike anything that had come before it. It was the first time a collection of wind turbines had ever been built at sea.

The electricity industry at the time considered the whole venture borderline absurd. Turbines at sea meant saltwater corrosion, storms, costly maintenance, and tiny output compared to conventional power plants. Most experts thought offshore wind was a solution looking for a problem that didn’t exist.

They would change their minds within six years.

Key findings

• Offshore wind farm: Vindeby’s 11 turbines began operation in 1991 C.E., making it the first collection of offshore wind turbines ever built — a single turbine had previously been installed in Swedish waters, but no multi-turbine offshore array had existed before.
• Bonus Energy turbines: Each 450-kilowatt turbine was specially modified for marine conditions, with sealed towers and internal air conditioning to control humidity and extend the life of the machinery.
• Wind energy output: Over its 25-year operational life, Vindeby produced a total of 243 gigawatt-hours of electricity before being decommissioned in 2017 C.E. — the first offshore wind farm ever taken down.

What made Vindeby possible

The project grew out of years of careful groundwork. Elkraft, one of the Danish energy utilities that would eventually become Ørsted, began exploring offshore turbine concepts in 1987 C.E. and surveyed Lolland’s surrounding waters in 1989 C.E. Their partner, SEAS, helped finance and build the farm. Together they spent an estimated €10 million.

The turbines were supplied by Bonus Energy, a Danish manufacturer that would later become part of Siemens Wind Power. Modifying them for offshore use was not simple. Engineers sealed the towers, added climate control systems to manage interior humidity, and adapted the foundations for shallow-water installation. The result was a machine that could survive the North Sea’s punishing conditions for decades.

Denmark in the early 1990s C.E. was already a global leader in wind energy on land, driven partly by public investment in the wake of the 1970s oil crises and a strong culture of energy cooperatives. That foundation — technical, financial, and political — made it the natural birthplace of offshore wind. But the people who built Vindeby weren’t just extending something familiar. They were testing whether wind energy could work in an entirely new environment, with almost no blueprint to follow.

From experiment to industry

Vindeby was always understood as a learning exercise. Engineers documented what worked and what didn’t. They studied how salt air degraded components, how underwater foundations performed, and how maintenance crews could safely access turbines at sea. That accumulated knowledge fed directly into the design of every offshore project that followed.

By 1997 C.E., just six years after Vindeby opened, offshore wind was generating more energy per turbine than land-based installations in Denmark. The skeptics had gone quiet. Larger farms like Tunø Knob, built in 1995 C.E., refined the model further. The cost per unit of electricity began to fall.

Today, offshore wind is one of the fastest-growing energy sectors on Earth. The International Energy Agency projects that offshore wind capacity could increase more than tenfold by 2040 C.E. Turbines now reach heights of over 300 meters and produce more than 15 megawatts each — roughly 33 times the output of a Vindeby turbine. The cost of offshore wind electricity has fallen by more than 70 percent since 2010 C.E., according to IRENA.

All of that traces a line back to a shallow bay off Lolland.

Lasting impact

Vindeby’s most important legacy may not be the electricity it generated, but the confidence it provided. It proved that turbines could survive at sea, that offshore construction was operationally feasible, and that the resulting power was economically viable at scale — even if that scale took time to arrive.

The farm also influenced how decommissioning works. When Vindeby was taken down in 2017 C.E., most of its components were recycled — metals, concrete, and most of the 33 fiberglass blades, which weighed 1.2 tonnes each. Some blades were acquired by researchers at Risø, some went to museums, and some were repurposed as noise barriers. One turbine now stands as a static display at the Energy Museum near Bjerringbro. The decommissioning wasn’t perfect — some fiberglass from the hub ended up in landfill near Aalborg — but the process established practices that later projects built on.

Offshore wind has since become central to the energy strategies of the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, China, and the United States, among others. The Wind Power database documents how Vindeby fits into a global expansion that now spans hundreds of farms and dozens of countries.

Blindspots and limits

Vindeby’s story is sometimes told as pure triumph, but it came with real constraints. The turbines were small and expensive relative to their output, and for years offshore wind remained a niche technology that relied heavily on government support to survive economically. The decommissioning also raised unresolved questions about fiberglass recycling that the wind industry is still working through today — blade disposal remains one of the sector’s most significant unsolved environmental challenges.

It is also worth acknowledging that Danish innovation in wind energy drew on technical and engineering communities that were largely homogenous and heavily state-subsidized. The benefits of cheap renewable electricity have not reached all communities equally, and the supply chains for modern wind turbines involve mining and manufacturing with their own environmental costs.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Wikipedia — Vindeby Offshore Wind Farm

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