Poul La Cour - Popular Technical Enlightenment

Popular Technical Enlightenment

The fact that la Cour’s ideal mill looked very much like the traditional Dutch windmill resulted in some criticism of his work, and government support was reduced in 1902. But by that time most of the experimental work had been completed and published, and he only considered these experiments as a means to his goal which was the development of the rural areas in Denmark. It thus happened that in 1902 the windmill in Askov became a prototype electrical power plant serving the village of Askov until 1958 with batteries for energy storage and a petrol-engine for reserve power. From the same time la Cour started to propagate the idea of wind electricity. If people in a city or a village planned a power-plant, la Cour was often invited to explain the advantages of this new energy source. He even wrote a fairy-tale, “Trolden”, about energy for children, and there was no doubt that electricity was the hero in that fairy-tale. The most important means of propagating wind electricity was the Danish Wind Electricity Society (DVES) initiated by la Cour in 1903. For the next five years, the consultant engineer of DVES planned a hundred small electricity power-plants, a third of these being based on wind power.

Just as important for rural electricity was the training of rural electricians. DVES instructed about 20 electricians a year in Askov. They learned theory for three months with the maintenance and development of the Askov wind power-plant as a parallel practical experience. They finished with a project building a small power-plant somewhere in Denmark. This was a short training period compared to the 4 years of the city electrician, but an investigation of their later careers shows that most of them found jobs as rural electricians – many as mangers of small power plants.

Finally DVES published a bimonthly journal on wind electricity with la Cour as the author of most of the articles. Comparing this total activity with the actual number of small rural electric power-plants built in Denmark in the beginning of the century one must conclude that DVES was one of the most important factors in the unique decentralized electrification in Denmark.