WIND FARM IN NORTH KOREA

In May and September of 1999, a team of American energy specialists from The Nautilus Insitute, which included past and present students and affiliates of ERG/RAEL (Peter Hayes, Nautilus executive director; project manager Jim Williams; village electrification specialist Chris Greacen; and energy analyst David Von Hippel), along with their North Korean counterparts, installed seven wind generators, with just over 10 kilowatts of capacity, and a power house with electrical equipment that could provide stand-alone power, as well as interface with the North Korean grid, at Unhari, a small coastal village 70 miles west of Pyongyang.

The system, which was turned on October 5th, has several goals. First is to generate electricity in North Korea to meet humanitarian end uses. The wind turbine towers provide clean, renewable energy to the village's medical clinic, kindergarten, and 20 households in this remote farming hamlet. The second goal is to lessen tensions on the volatile Korean peninsula, divided into a communist north and capitalist south following the end of World War II.

In addition to generating power, compact fluorescent light bulbs were supplied to the kindergarten and twenty households, and the American and North Koreans also jointly conducted a rural energy survey and a socioeconomic assessment in the village -- the first time that such standard international project planning methods have been employed in the DPRK.

A complete description of the project can be found on The Nautilus Institute's web site.