Andrew Garrad CBE

In 1971 Andrew Garrad built his first wind turbine in his parent’s field. In 1984 he co-founded the Garrad Hassan Group (GH) which grew to become the world’s largest renewable energy consultancy. When he retired, in 2015, it had 1,000 staff in 29 countries. His abiding technical interest is mathematical modelling. He developed GH under the guiding principle that it should provide the world’s best models of wind turbines and wind farms in all their complexity, on- and off-shore. The company’s independence allowed validation of these models on many different turbines. Using them he developed a design consultancy which opened up the world’s manufacturing base, already established in other industries, to this new industry with maximum ease. He kick-started the Chinese industry.

He also pioneered rigorous statistical analysis of wind farms which allowed conventional project finance to be used in wind farming, and short-term forecasting that allowed wind farms to bid into the conventional electricity markets. Through GH’s global network, in parallel with his technical engineering interests, he helped to develop new wind energy markets all over the world.