2015 OUTLOOK: Wind turbines get bigger and smarter - Recharge (subscription)There are likely to be few surprises on the technology landscape in 2015 — and that is just the way the wind-power business wants it.
Last year, the next generation of wind turbines and their componentry were pushed to their limits in utility-standard prototype trials and long hours on test rigs. Now a range of 6-8MW machines are battle-ready, bristling with blades eclipsing the wingspans of the largest commercial airliners and powered by drivetrains that can cope with the torque of industrial rock crushers.
The biggest of them, MHI-Vestas’ 8MW V164, is, after many years, finally set to see first orders inked this year, after the joint venture leased Vestas’ fabrication halls on the Isle of Wight, off southern England, to build the giant turbine’s 80-metre blades.
A prototype of the machine has been turning at the Danish national test centre at Østerild since last February, under the watch of technology partner Dong Energy, with which Vestas struck an advanced co-operation agreement in 2012 to bring the model to market. A conditional order for 258MW of the machines for the utility’s Burbo Bank Extension project off the UK is now tantalisingly close.
It has been a long and winding road for the V164, originally a 7MW design, since its launch in 2011. But the intervening four years have been put to good use by the OEM — the turbine’s medium-speed gearbox and permanent-magnet generator drivetrain have been run to a standstill on a bespoke testing rig, with a second to be rigged up this year on the new 10MW function tester at Denmark’s Lindø Offshore Renewables Centre. And its blades have been flapped and flexed to exhaustion on the Isle of Wight to de-risk the technology “to the satisfaction of clients and the banks”.
Longer blades
The blades on the V164 — a dry glass-fibre and pre-cured pultruded carbon “structural shell” design that carries loads on its outer surface rather than on inner support spars — will not be the longest yet produced by the wind industry. That crown goes to another Danish company, SSP Technology , which built the 83.5-metre blades for Samsung Heavy Industries’ 7MW S-171-7.0, installed at Methil in Scotland last year.
But MHI-Vestas’ blades will be the first to be laid up for serial production — a clear sign of how far the offshore industry has progressed. For the OEM, a limelight delivery to Burbo Bank awaits, with “preferred supplier” deals waiting lined up for the EDPR-led 1.1GW Moray Firth development off Scotland and E.ON’s 400MW Rampion off southern England.
Ultra-long blades will be de rigeur for the 6-8MW behemoths. The standard bearer a few years ago, LM Wind Power 73.5-metre blades, which are turning on Alstom’s 6MW Haliade 150 prototype off Belgium, are now looking comparatively short. Siemens’ SWT-6.0-154 at the UK’s Gunfleet Sands 3 has 75-metre blades, while the Euros units for the MHI SeaAngels due to be erected at the Hunterston test centre in Scotland and at Japan’s Fukushima Forward floating array will measure 81.6 metres. French OEM Areva’s 8MW concept, which is due to start onshore prototype testing at the end of the year, will fly 88-metre blades. Euros even has blueprints for a 90-metre model on its drawing board.
UK outfit Blade Dynamics, however, will top them all with its 100-metre BD100, which is envisaged for a future 10MW turbine. The whopping modular concept — as tall as the US Saturn 5 rocket — is based on a design innovation that jettisons conventional single-mould fabrication in favour of proprietary “non-mechanical” jointing techniques that bond 10-30-metre carbon-fibre sections in to one very long lightweight unit.
Being developed as an 80-metre model — so it is not “a big white elephant waiting for turbine [of a large enough capacity] to be tested on” — the first of the ultra-long blades will soon be arriving in two pieces from company facilities in New Orleans and Southampton, England. They will be assembled for endurance trials at ORE Catapult’s R&D base in Blyth, northeast England, before being bolted to a 6MW Siemens turbine in 2016 for final flight tests.
Several blade makers — Blade Dynamics and Denmark’s LM among them — are experimenting with extensions to create longer blades from existing models. LM is moving forward with a groundbreaking research project to develop a range of blades with flexible composite tips that could trim the levelised cost of energy (LCoE) by 8-10%. And by the second quarter, Blade Dynamics expects to have worked out the necessary manufacturing technology for fabrication of a performance-boosting and “design-agnostic” hybrid tip with built-in protection against erosion and lightning.
Though wind power begins in the blade tip, size is not quite everything. In an era of cost-reduction engineering, the efficiency of the fabrication of the blades — which make up 7% of the price of an offshore turbine — may increasingly be key.
Senvion’s new 6.2M152 prototype, erected in Germany in December, is flying a trio of SSP Technology 74.4-metre blades — slimline 25.5-tonne glass-fibre reinforced plastic models that were laid up using “optimal tooling equipment and production processes”. No hard numbers have yet been made public on the manufacturing cost of the blades, but Senvion’s new 152-metre-diameter-rotor machine is expected to yield 20% more energy (in wind speeds of 9.5 metres per second) than its 6.2M126, which has a 126-metre-diameter rotor.
Two-blade turbines
And for something completely different in 2015: the first industrial-scale two-bladed offshore turbine, the 6MW Ming Yang SCD, will begin turning in anger off China this year. The prototype at the Rudong intertidal demonstration site will see 69-metre carbon-capped glassfibre blades powering a super-compact-drive (SCD) gearbox and permanent-magnet generator housed in a water-cooled sealed nacelle. A second prototype of the machine — designed by Germany’s Aerodyn — is due to be installed off western Norway in late 2015 or early 2016 atop a four-legged Owec steel jacket at the Marine Energy Test Centre, near the pioneering Hywind 1 floating turbine. Aerodyn also has a 168-metre-diameter-rotor 8MW offshore model on the drawing board.
And in a sign of the segment’s growing maturity, designers Envision, Condor, 2B and Nautica all expect to have full-scale two-bladed machines in the water by the end of 2016.
There is a strong case for propeller-topped turbines. Two blades cost 30% less than three, with only a fractional drop in energy yields — 3%, according to Aerodyn. And the teeter hub spreads out the loads, rather than transferring them down-tower, leading to less expensive nacelles and towers. Taken together, this could translate into a 20% LCoE advantage over three-bladed offshore machines.
New offshore foundations
Offshore wind costs are also being tackled from another important angle in 2015: from the ground up. Several alternatives to steel monopiles are being trialled for the deeper waters that the industry is wading into.
Already in the water at Germany’s Borkum Riffgrund 1 is an 850-tonne suction bucket jacket (SBJ) designed by Dutch outfit SPT Offshore and built and installed by a team led by Dong Energy. The trussed-steel foundation is footed with three cylindrical caissons fitted with high-pressure vacuum pumps that can suck the whole structure down into the seabed and lock it in place for grouting — with no need for the expensive vessels to hammer monopiles deep into the earth. The SBJ is expected to be “very competitive” for wind farms in water depths of 30-60 metres once optimised and in serial production.
Another front-running concept is the crane-free gravity foundation (CGF) — a scaled-down concrete-and-steel version of popular offshore oil platform bases — designed by Norway’s Seatower and Danish contractor MT Højgaard, and built by French construction giant Eiffage TP.
A prototype CGF weighing 1,423 tonnes and topped with a meteorological mast has been floated out to the site of the 498MW Fécamp offshore project in the English Channel. If the developers, EDF-led Eolien Maritime France, like what they see, the foundation could be used for the 83 Haliade turbines in the frame for the €2bn ($2.5bn) wind farm.
It is hoped that the CGF — a skittle-shape structure than can be quickly towed out to site by tugs and lowered to the seabed without a high-price construction jack-up vessel — can play a leading role in France’s bid to install 3.9GW of offshore wind by the end of the decade.
Floating wind
Progress is also expected in 2015 on those most “alternative” of foundation designs, the floaters.
The single prototype floating wind turbines off Norway, Portugal and Japan are on the verge of multiplying into second-generation arrays, with Statoil about to take a final investment decision on its 30MW Buchan Deep project off northeast Scotland, for installation in 2016.
American pioneer Principle Power has applied for approval to install 30MW arrays using its triangular WindFloat semi-submersible foundation in the Portuguese Atlantic and the Pacific off the US Northwest. Scotland’s Pilot Offshore Renewables has a 50MW array, known as Kincardine, planned for the deeps off Aberdeen, with details of the project’s scope expected to emerge this year.
Japan is set to create the world’s first floating wind array in February when it adds a 7MW Mitsubishi SeaAngel — on a V-shaped semi-submersible — to the existing 2MW Hitachi turbine and floating substation at the Fukushima Forward project. Another SeaAngel, on an advanced spar foundation, is due to be added later this year.
DNV GL’s projections on floating wind add to the anticipation. According to its modelling, installed capacity will climb from today’s 6.3MW to 66MW by 2017; 120MW a year later; and 870MW by 2020. The prize could be huge.
However, in 2015, the goal is more immediate: to lower the cost of offshore wind. The old North Sea oil industry adage that “technology saves” will be challenged again as offshore wind developers head out of harbour, desperate to drive their machines’ LCoE down below the magic £100 ($156) per MWh mark and ever closer to parity with fossil fuels.
Last year, the next generation of wind turbines and their componentry were pushed to their limits in utility-standard prototype trials and long hours on test rigs. Now a range of 6-8MW machines are battle-ready, bristling with blades eclipsing the wingspans of the largest commercial airliners and powered by drivetrains that can cope with the torque of industrial rock crushers.
The biggest of them, MHI-Vestas’ 8MW V164, is, after many years, finally set to see first orders inked this year, after the joint venture leased Vestas’ fabrication halls on the Isle of Wight, off southern England, to build the giant turbine’s 80-metre blades.
A prototype of the machine has been turning at the Danish national test centre at Østerild since last February, under the watch of technology partner Dong Energy, with which Vestas struck an advanced co-operation agreement in 2012 to bring the model to market. A conditional order for 258MW of the machines for the utility’s Burbo Bank Extension project off the UK is now tantalisingly close.
It has been a long and winding road for the V164, originally a 7MW design, since its launch in 2011. But the intervening four years have been put to good use by the OEM — the turbine’s medium-speed gearbox and permanent-magnet generator drivetrain have been run to a standstill on a bespoke testing rig, with a second to be rigged up this year on the new 10MW function tester at Denmark’s Lindø Offshore Renewables Centre. And its blades have been flapped and flexed to exhaustion on the Isle of Wight to de-risk the technology “to the satisfaction of clients and the banks”.
Longer blades
The blades on the V164 — a dry glass-fibre and pre-cured pultruded carbon “structural shell” design that carries loads on its outer surface rather than on inner support spars — will not be the longest yet produced by the wind industry. That crown goes to another Danish company, SSP Technology , which built the 83.5-metre blades for Samsung Heavy Industries’ 7MW S-171-7.0, installed at Methil in Scotland last year.
But MHI-Vestas’ blades will be the first to be laid up for serial production — a clear sign of how far the offshore industry has progressed. For the OEM, a limelight delivery to Burbo Bank awaits, with “preferred supplier” deals waiting lined up for the EDPR-led 1.1GW Moray Firth development off Scotland and E.ON’s 400MW Rampion off southern England.
Ultra-long blades will be de rigeur for the 6-8MW behemoths. The standard bearer a few years ago, LM Wind Power 73.5-metre blades, which are turning on Alstom’s 6MW Haliade 150 prototype off Belgium, are now looking comparatively short. Siemens’ SWT-6.0-154 at the UK’s Gunfleet Sands 3 has 75-metre blades, while the Euros units for the MHI SeaAngels due to be erected at the Hunterston test centre in Scotland and at Japan’s Fukushima Forward floating array will measure 81.6 metres. French OEM Areva’s 8MW concept, which is due to start onshore prototype testing at the end of the year, will fly 88-metre blades. Euros even has blueprints for a 90-metre model on its drawing board.
UK outfit Blade Dynamics, however, will top them all with its 100-metre BD100, which is envisaged for a future 10MW turbine. The whopping modular concept — as tall as the US Saturn 5 rocket — is based on a design innovation that jettisons conventional single-mould fabrication in favour of proprietary “non-mechanical” jointing techniques that bond 10-30-metre carbon-fibre sections in to one very long lightweight unit.
Being developed as an 80-metre model — so it is not “a big white elephant waiting for turbine [of a large enough capacity] to be tested on” — the first of the ultra-long blades will soon be arriving in two pieces from company facilities in New Orleans and Southampton, England. They will be assembled for endurance trials at ORE Catapult’s R&D base in Blyth, northeast England, before being bolted to a 6MW Siemens turbine in 2016 for final flight tests.
Several blade makers — Blade Dynamics and Denmark’s LM among them — are experimenting with extensions to create longer blades from existing models. LM is moving forward with a groundbreaking research project to develop a range of blades with flexible composite tips that could trim the levelised cost of energy (LCoE) by 8-10%. And by the second quarter, Blade Dynamics expects to have worked out the necessary manufacturing technology for fabrication of a performance-boosting and “design-agnostic” hybrid tip with built-in protection against erosion and lightning.
Though wind power begins in the blade tip, size is not quite everything. In an era of cost-reduction engineering, the efficiency of the fabrication of the blades — which make up 7% of the price of an offshore turbine — may increasingly be key.
Senvion’s new 6.2M152 prototype, erected in Germany in December, is flying a trio of SSP Technology 74.4-metre blades — slimline 25.5-tonne glass-fibre reinforced plastic models that were laid up using “optimal tooling equipment and production processes”. No hard numbers have yet been made public on the manufacturing cost of the blades, but Senvion’s new 152-metre-diameter-rotor machine is expected to yield 20% more energy (in wind speeds of 9.5 metres per second) than its 6.2M126, which has a 126-metre-diameter rotor.
Two-blade turbines
And for something completely different in 2015: the first industrial-scale two-bladed offshore turbine, the 6MW Ming Yang SCD, will begin turning in anger off China this year. The prototype at the Rudong intertidal demonstration site will see 69-metre carbon-capped glassfibre blades powering a super-compact-drive (SCD) gearbox and permanent-magnet generator housed in a water-cooled sealed nacelle. A second prototype of the machine — designed by Germany’s Aerodyn — is due to be installed off western Norway in late 2015 or early 2016 atop a four-legged Owec steel jacket at the Marine Energy Test Centre, near the pioneering Hywind 1 floating turbine. Aerodyn also has a 168-metre-diameter-rotor 8MW offshore model on the drawing board.
And in a sign of the segment’s growing maturity, designers Envision, Condor, 2B and Nautica all expect to have full-scale two-bladed machines in the water by the end of 2016.
There is a strong case for propeller-topped turbines. Two blades cost 30% less than three, with only a fractional drop in energy yields — 3%, according to Aerodyn. And the teeter hub spreads out the loads, rather than transferring them down-tower, leading to less expensive nacelles and towers. Taken together, this could translate into a 20% LCoE advantage over three-bladed offshore machines.
New offshore foundations
Offshore wind costs are also being tackled from another important angle in 2015: from the ground up. Several alternatives to steel monopiles are being trialled for the deeper waters that the industry is wading into.
Already in the water at Germany’s Borkum Riffgrund 1 is an 850-tonne suction bucket jacket (SBJ) designed by Dutch outfit SPT Offshore and built and installed by a team led by Dong Energy. The trussed-steel foundation is footed with three cylindrical caissons fitted with high-pressure vacuum pumps that can suck the whole structure down into the seabed and lock it in place for grouting — with no need for the expensive vessels to hammer monopiles deep into the earth. The SBJ is expected to be “very competitive” for wind farms in water depths of 30-60 metres once optimised and in serial production.
Another front-running concept is the crane-free gravity foundation (CGF) — a scaled-down concrete-and-steel version of popular offshore oil platform bases — designed by Norway’s Seatower and Danish contractor MT Højgaard, and built by French construction giant Eiffage TP.
A prototype CGF weighing 1,423 tonnes and topped with a meteorological mast has been floated out to the site of the 498MW Fécamp offshore project in the English Channel. If the developers, EDF-led Eolien Maritime France, like what they see, the foundation could be used for the 83 Haliade turbines in the frame for the €2bn ($2.5bn) wind farm.
It is hoped that the CGF — a skittle-shape structure than can be quickly towed out to site by tugs and lowered to the seabed without a high-price construction jack-up vessel — can play a leading role in France’s bid to install 3.9GW of offshore wind by the end of the decade.
Floating wind
Progress is also expected in 2015 on those most “alternative” of foundation designs, the floaters.
The single prototype floating wind turbines off Norway, Portugal and Japan are on the verge of multiplying into second-generation arrays, with Statoil about to take a final investment decision on its 30MW Buchan Deep project off northeast Scotland, for installation in 2016.
American pioneer Principle Power has applied for approval to install 30MW arrays using its triangular WindFloat semi-submersible foundation in the Portuguese Atlantic and the Pacific off the US Northwest. Scotland’s Pilot Offshore Renewables has a 50MW array, known as Kincardine, planned for the deeps off Aberdeen, with details of the project’s scope expected to emerge this year.
Japan is set to create the world’s first floating wind array in February when it adds a 7MW Mitsubishi SeaAngel — on a V-shaped semi-submersible — to the existing 2MW Hitachi turbine and floating substation at the Fukushima Forward project. Another SeaAngel, on an advanced spar foundation, is due to be added later this year.
DNV GL’s projections on floating wind add to the anticipation. According to its modelling, installed capacity will climb from today’s 6.3MW to 66MW by 2017; 120MW a year later; and 870MW by 2020. The prize could be huge.
However, in 2015, the goal is more immediate: to lower the cost of offshore wind. The old North Sea oil industry adage that “technology saves” will be challenged again as offshore wind developers head out of harbour, desperate to drive their machines’ LCoE down below the magic £100 ($156) per MWh mark and ever closer to parity with fossil fuels.