The first German Wind farms had direct connections, without expensive inverter stages. So they are generators, but they are also indistinguishable from motors.

The first German Wind farms had direct connections, without expensive inverter stages. So they are generators, but they are also indistinguishable from motors. There is sometimes wind, sometimes not and the windmills humm about. I still have videos of windparks where some windmills run in opposite directions, those are very rare now, you find them on YouTube. Doesn't matter with government subsidies. How much power they generated, was long a mystery in engineering. Maybe it still is? So they advance and they made sure they only turn in one direction. It is better for the funding this way. So some just didn't turn and started humming. There are big parks and some are running fast, but some are taking a break, but why? There is no wind in this one spot maybe? Do we have enough power already? Why doesn't it move when it could? It took some time and then most projects have been retro fitted with costly inverter stages, moving from AC to DC to AC again. Maybe multiple times, depending on the business model and how many parks are packed together. This way it's much better to calculate the cost, since the subsidies are drying up. Obviously all of them are now pure generators and can never be motors. It would simply be stupid to assume otherwise.