Wind Farm in Tymień, Poland

Half way between our beach town of Kołobrzeg and the city of Koszalin lies Tymień, a very small and rather unnoticeable village. Unnoticeable, that is, until 25 wind turbines were built next to it six years ago.

In 2005, a 235 million zloty’s (85 million USD) project broke ground to produce what would have been the biggest wind farm in Poland at the time. Only a year later on May 8th 2006, the 50MW wind farm was officially opened. Spearheaded by an American company Invenergy Wind Europe, it was the biggest wind energy project in Poland and the entire Central Europe until 2008 when a 120MW wind farm was built by Portuguese Energia de Portugal in Margonin, Poland.

At 100 meters tall (328 feet) with a blade radius of 80 meters (262 feet) these wind turbines were quite a sight. Enough so that we had to stop and touch ’em. None of us had ever been so close to a wind turbine so why not get even closer. I was personally expecting the noise from the blades to be overwhelming but all I heard was the wind going by us at extremely high speed and couldn’t catch any noise from the blades at all.

Standing smack underneath the blade path I couldn’t stop thinking that “if this thing brakes apart right now there is no way we’re making it home by dinner time“. These turbines are huge and we really felt tiny standing next to one. I wonder if there was anyone watching us through the monitoring system in place or if it’s just set to record for when stuff goes wrong.

I’m really glad Poland is investing in green energy and hope to see more green projects all around. Here are the photos of our little field trip on the way back home.