Windpark excursion shows sustainability in action

Under the hot June sun, MU’s last field trip of the semester offered students the chance to get up close and personal with one of Austria’s major sources of renewable energy.

The group comprised mostly of students from the MSc in Sustainability, Development and Management and members of the Sustainability Committee, trekked out to the town of Deutsch Wagram (by public transit, of course) to see a wind energy farm in action.

Windpark Parbasdorf is located on the plains of Lower Austria’s Weinviertel, 25 minutes from downtown Vienna heading towards Slovakia. In this region of flat land and fairly consistent wind, the landscape is dotted with white towers generating energy from air movement, making it one of the most sustainable sources of energy following the initial building process.

Parbasdorf is one of the smaller parks in the area consisting of three turbines which have been harnessing wind power since 1998. With an annual output of 3,300,000 kWh, the three mills provide approximately 1/3 of the energy required for Deutsch Wagram’s 3,000 households.

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The technicians who maintain them are local community members, who initiated the idea to build a windpark in the fields outside their town and originally owned it. They later sold it to WEB Windenergie AG, but came up with the idea of a shareholder system for local people to have an investment in their own energy sources.

These two men, Franz Spehn and Markus Weiß, guided our MU group through the ins-and-outs of wind energy production in Austria (with English translation provided by Student Service Center representative extraordinaire Jesse Alexander).

A towering structure that would make even Don Quixote shiver, the tour took us inside a 600 Kw windmill manufactured by the Danish company Vestas, one of the leading producers of wind power technology. 63 metres above our heads, the 44m diameter blades were spinning slowly in the hot afternoon, covering an area of 1521 m². In total, the towers clock in at a hefty 91 tons each.

All MU students have the opportunity to attend excursions organized by the SC; the first trip this semester gave students the opportunity to visit Fernwärme Wien, Vienna’s garbage-burning energy plant. Stay tuned for next semester’s forays into sustainability in practice!

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Author: Stewart