Hermann Honnef

Hermann Honnef was a German inventor and wind energy visionary, born June 19, 1878 on Grafenwerth, a Rhine island in Bad Honnef, and died July 30, 1961 in Rheinbrohl, known for proposing giant wind power towers decades before the technology existed to build them. In the early 1930s he designed a scheme for large-scale electricity generation using towers roughly 300 meters tall, each carrying three rotors about 530 feet in diameter mounted together at the summit and functioning as separate generators rated at roughly 20 megawatts apiece, intended to draw on the stronger and steadier winds found at altitude. He presented the plans to the German government in 1931, drawing objections from petroleum interests, and secured enough funding to build a small-scale test model in 1941 before the Second World War ended the project short of a full-scale tower. He published his designs across several books and articles, leaving an early and influential roadmap for the large wind turbines developed decades later.