Higher Wind: Highlighted Expansion Opportunities to Repower Wind Energy

Abstract

Decarbonizing the world economy, before the most damaging effects of climate change become irreversible, requires substantially increasing renewable energy generation in the near future. However, this may be challenging in mature wind energy markets, where many advantageous wind locations are already engaged by older wind farms, potentially generating suboptimal wind harvesting. This research developed a novel method to systematically analyze diverse factors to determine the level of maturity of wind markets and evaluate the adequacy of wind farm repowering at regional and individual levels. The approach was applied to wind markets in the United States (U.S.), in which several states were identified as having diverse levels of maturity. Results obtained from case studies in Texas indicated a consequential number of wind farms that have reached their twenty-year end-of-life term and earlier obsolescence levels. The proposed approach aided in determining wind farms that may benefit from total or partial repowering. The method indicated that total repowering of selected installations would significantly increase overall wind energy generation, considering that these older installations have access to some of the best wind speeds, infrastructure and areas to grow. The proposed method can be applied to different world wind markets.

Onshore Wind Farm Development: Technologies and Layouts

“…Furthermore, developers are continuously looking for new approaches to increase the size and equipment proximity of wind farms due to the significant synergetic benefits that this provides. An important factor on maximizing area utilization for wind farms is the limited availability of optimal locations for wind harvesting [108]. These locations need to have good wind resource availability while simultaneously having access to consumer electric markets and limiting disruption to other activities.…”

“…These factors raise the density of wind turbines per area, increasing the number of wind turbines per farm, and reducing their separation. Additionally, decreasing the distances between turbines minimizes the required length of the transmission cables running to farm transformers, lowering installation costs [108,111].…”

“…Figure 3a indicates the growth divided by continents, showing that in 2020, Asia, Europe, and North The wind farm capacity factor (CF) will continue to improve in the future as technology advances, developing larger and more efficient equipment, maximizing wind site extraction, and optimizing wind farm layouts. Figure 4 showcases the exponential increase of CF over the last 20 years in Texas from data provided by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) [108,116]. As indicated by ERCOT, when required, all wind speeds were evaluated at wind turbine hub height.…”

“…This present state of affairs should be evaluated by considering that wind turbines were designed to have an average lifespan of 20 years, after which the unrecoverable performance loss becomes very significant and the power output, when compared with current equipment, is several times smaller. Operators at this stage normally need to decide on the future of these older wind farms occupying prime spots for wind energy: closure, repowering, or run-to-fail [108,182,183].…”