Two of contemporary wind energy’s pioneers – Henrik Stiesdal and Andrew Garrad – will share this 12 months’s Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.
The QEPrize – typically described as the closest factor international engineering has to a Nobel Prize – rewards the pair’s “4 many years of achievements in advancing the design, manufacture and deployment of high-performance wind generators – developments which have enabled wind power to make a fabric contribution to international electrical energy technology and ship transformational impression in diversifying the worldwide power combine”.
Stiesdal is recognised for his position within the late Nineteen Seventies designing the turbine that got here to be often called the Danish Idea and serves because the blueprint for the machines that dominate the worldwide business to this present day.
By his work with Vestas and later Siemens, Stiesdal – who turns into the primary Dane to win the QEPrize – was additionally concerned in key wind improvements reminiscent of single-piece blade manufacturing and the direct-drive turbine.
Briton Garrad is credited for pioneering the BLADED computational design instrument which “permits engineers to mannequin a sophisticated turbine system in its entirety and to foretell its behaviour with the boldness wanted to allow manufacture of those big machines”.
Stiesdal and Garrad will break up £500,000 ($629,000) as a part of the prize, whose earlier winners embrace the builders of PERC photo voltaic expertise and net pioneers together with Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
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Stiesdal stated: “It’s an honour to obtain the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering alongside Andrew. To me, it represents way more than private recognition; it’s a tribute to the collective efforts of pioneers and engineers in wind energy.
“Because the late Nineteen Seventies they embodied the essence of this Prize, creating daring, groundbreaking improvements delivering sustainable and aggressive power, addressing local weather change and offering international advantages for humanity.”
Garrad added: “Wind power has been with us for millennia, however within the final 50 years, it entered a brand new period. The ten-metre diameter generators of my early skilled life have grow to be the 250-metre giants of at this time – merely wonderful! What might probably be extra thrilling for an engineer?”
