Economic and technical issues affecting the development of the wind-power industry in Poland

An assessment of local wind conditions allows one to predict that about 25percent of the Poland''s territory is advantageous in that respect. Thus the author tries to explain why the development of the wind-power industry in Poland is so slow, especially in relation to the leading European countries such as Germany, Denmark or Spain. At present in Poland, there are wind farms of 27.5 MW total installed power. The Polish wind-turbine of 160 kW power, produced by the NOWOMAG factory, as well as a new approach of the KOMAG Centre aiming at the development of the prototype of state-of-the-art wind turbine of 1 MW power—according to the original technical concept which is a compromise between present multi-gear and gearless solutions in wind turbines — are presented in the paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]