20th Anniversary of AMO’s Wind Energy Plant ANIMA
On the 7th of June 1995, twenty years right before the energy transition, for which the German Federal Government now takes great care, the rotors named „Wolfgang“, „Georg“ and „Wilhelm“ started spinning. So they did successfully without an essential break until the 9th of May 2015, a few days before the end of its guarantee period. After 20 years of operation time, a fissure within the pivot of the complex led to a defect, which is going to be repaired just within the next few weeks, so that the complex will be 100% operational again. Within its total operation time, several heavy storms were overcome without damage and thus technical availability of 97% was reached.
For a long time this was not only the biggest wind power station to be put into operation on an European Campus; ANIMA, the soul, was the first complex, for which a cost compatible compensation for electricity fed into the grid appropriate to the “Aachen Model” was authorized. This was financed by structural subsidy funds of the European Community for long term sponsorship of research and innovative concepts. Within the past years of operation, ANIMA produced more than 600.000 kilo-watt hours of electric energy, corresponding to a total yield of more than 14 million kilo-watt hours within 20 years.
The non-profit AMO GmbH is the operator of this facility and feeds the yielded electric energy into the grid of the city of Aachen. Thereby gained profits are used to pay partly the operational costs of the AMICA research laboratory, in which applied research in the area of nanolithography and nanotechnology is successfully practiced since 1997. AMO already early began searching alternative energy concepts to be used for AMICA.
The construction of AMO’s wind energy plant at the 7th of June 1995 at the campus on urban district only took place against stringy resistance of diverse urban departments. Its blades were named after the first names of its worst opponents within the city and the federal state, hoping that they will rotate for long time up there. Following strict interpretation of the common public interest of AMO, it is not a model about a few to become rich, as it is with other models. AMO invests in solar energy research and other important research fields in the area of renewable energy.
A special advantage of ANIMAs design without transmission is, that the wind wheel is also working efficiently at awkward wind regime. ANIMA height equals 48 meters, it has three rotating blades, each with length of 20 meters. The Enercon 40 type plant produces a peak power of 500 kilo-watt, reached at wind speeds above about 12m/s. Hereby a rotation speed up to 36 rounds per minute can be reached. At average, approximately 50% of the energy, which is consumed for air conditioning and energy-intensive production of electronic devices within the AMICA research laboratories, is produced by ANIMA. This means a favorable and haughty balance!
