"Renewable energy
from and for the region"
...that is the motto of the two small scale wind power companies masseWind and masseWatt in Thedinghausen near Bremen. Since 1998 and 2000 these windfarms have been feeding clean electricity into the grids of the local utilities e·on/Avacon and EWE.
The beginnings of these projects, deeply rooted in the region, date back to 1991 when a small group of enthusiasts got together under the name masseWind GbR, refounded in 1997 as masseWind Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH (Ltd.), the actual driving force behind both projects.
In total, more than 4 million euros were invested in the site at Beppener Bruch. In a good year, the five turbines produce about 7.5 million kilowatthours, the equivalent of the electricity consumed by approximately 2,500 households. On a calculatory basis, the electricity needed in the local community of Thedinghausen can almost completely be supplied by our turbines.
Nearly 100 citizens from the region regard their share in a wind power project on their own doorstep as a sensible alternative to traditional investments as well as to the more anonymous wind power funds marketed by the big commercial players - like those who in the meantime have started competing for the wind at Beppener Bruch.
Think globally - invest locally!
Here is a short summary of the contents of our German web pages:
The first of our companies operates three turbines AN BONUS 600 kW/44-3 with a hub height of 58 metres and a rotor diameter of 44 metres. They were erected in 1998 at a total cost of 3.3 million deutschmarks (approx. 1.687 million euros). 51 citizens from the region invested individual amounts of between 5,000 and 200,000 deutschmarks to help collect the capital needed to realise what at the time was by far the biggest wind power project in the Verden district.
Spurred by the success and good local acceptance of the first project, the second company was founded in 1999 and since 2000 has been operating two turbines in the megawatt class, AN BONUS 1.3 MW/62, with a hub height of 68 metres and a rotor diameter of 62 metres. Here the total investment amounted to 2.45 million euros. The start-up capital was provided by initially 64 shareholders, many of them already involved in the first project. The amount of kilowatthours produced by our companies can be found under yield masseWind and yield masseWatt. A technical description in English of how the classic Danish BONUS wind turbines are constructed can be downloaded in .pdf-format here.