Wind Turbines in the Netherlands

Narrator: Famous for its picturesque windmills, it's surprising that the
Netherlands has been overtaken by Denmark, which is now
Europe’s number one user of wind power. But with the Dutch
government’s commitment to improve energy efficiency by a third
and to increase the share of renewable energy sources by 10% by
2020, wind power may still end up leading the race for renewable
solutions.

Wind power capacity in the Netherlands is already 325 megawatts,
enough power to supply quarter of a million Dutch homes with
energy for one year. And in this small overcrowded country, the
main problem is finding a site.

At Lelystad, a giant wind farm has been erected by one of the
Dutch utility companies.

Henk Kouwenhoven: In fact there are two wind farms here; one wind farm of 18 wind
turbines, 750-kilowatt each, and the wind farm of 28 machines of
600-kilowatt each. We always say that we generate electricity here
for about 30,000 households over the year.

Narrator: Having found a site and got permission to build the farm, erecting
the turbines is not so difficult. It takes about a week to build the
foundations and prepare the site. What's harder is moving the
gigantic parts from the factory to the location; gearboxes and
motors stretching up to six and a half meters in length, sometimes
coming from different countries.

Henk Kouwenhoven: Turbines don’t need very much maintenance because it's a very
reliable machine. What I do is twice a year, I check the oil and
check all kinds of settings and see if all the volts are still there and
that’s -- in fact that’s all.

Narrator: Are they safe?

Henk Kouwenhoven: They are very safe. There is of course always a failure or risk, but
we calculated those risks because the site here is very close to a
highway and the failure risks are about one event in 5,000 years or
something like that.

Narrator: Do the blades ever falloff?

Henk Kouwenhoven: No, we never had falling of blades, carefully enough.

Narrator: It isn’t only utility companies which see renewables like wind as a
way to profit from green energy. Dairy farmers like Klaas van
Ittersum also see windmills as a way to earn money and provide an
alternative income.

Hands On asked Klaas why he wanted a windmill.

Klaas van Ittersum: When I was a child, I always wanted to have a windmill. I built
one myself and well, when you grow older, the plan grew bigger. I
think that the income of the dairy cows can go less and I think that
supports my income.

Narrator: Klaas has invested nearly $600,000.00. It will take him eight years
to pay back the bank loan. So why was the windmill such a good
option?

Klaas van Ittersum: I have enough work for the cables and I wanted to invest to have
more income, but I didn’t want to work for it. So, I had to build a
windmill. It's the only way to have money and that not work for it.