Peter Musgrove

Peter Musgrove is a British engineer who led the United Kingdom's large-scale vertical-axis wind turbine research programme. Teaching engineering at the University of Reading from 1974, at a time when wind power was the UK's least favoured renewable energy option, he argued for the potential of large offshore wind farms and became one of the prime movers behind the country's vertical-axis wind turbine programme through the 1970s and 1980s, among the first to propose large-scale vertical-axis machines for offshore use. His most notable prototype, the variable-geometry VAWT 450, incorporated a blade-reefing mechanism that could feather the blades to control power output in high winds. He was a founding figure of the British Wind Energy Association, formed in 1978, and served as its first chairman. He left academia for industry in 1988, working through the 1990s as National Wind Power's Head of Development across wind farm development and wind turbine assessment, retired in 2003, and received the association's first Lifetime Achievement Award.