The British wind community's 27th annual get-together -- now billed by the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) as a wind and marine renewables event -- attracted over 1000 people, on a par with the record attendance at the industry's Glasgow conference in 2003. The BWEA27 conference and exhibition was held over three days in Wales at Cardiff's National Exhibition Centre. Seventy-five speakers presented papers in 22 plenary or parallel technical sessions. The overall high quality of the presentations sustained interest right up to the final session, which ended on the upbeat note of a breakthrough in the thorny issue of the effect of wind turbines on air defence radar (Windpower Monthly, November 2005).
An unprecedented number of visitors came to see the 85 exhibiting companies, including a record 200 members of the general public. "People were genuinely interested to come along and find what it is all about," says the BWEA's Alison Hill. The high recorded numbers, however, were not always apparent on the exhibition floor as delegates were enticed away into conference sessions, closeted in meeting rooms or were busy conducting business in corridors.
