Technical background

Technology

Onshore, wind energy is a near-mature technology. The main technological development in recent years has been a trend towards ever larger wind turbines. Since the first commercial wind turbines of the 1980s, their size has evolved from 0.022 MW to about 6 MW today. By 2030, average turbine sizes of 2 MW (on-shore) and 10 MW (offshore) are expected, with gigawatt-size wind farms likely for offshore.

EU wind energy capacity (2007)

For the time being, wind energy from off-shore contributes only a very small share to Europe's total wind energy generation. This is expected to change in the coming decades since wind conditions are more preferable off-shore and many well-placed on-shore sites will be already in use. But there are still important problems to be solved before off-shore wind can be massively deployed. The most challenging areas are turbine design, load management, the grid integration and better storage capacities.

Wind power capacity witnessed a tremendous growth in recent years and reached a capacity of 56 GW (of which 1.08 GW are offshore) in 2007 which corresponds to 7.3% of total capacity in the EU (data from EWEA). More than 40% of new electricity generating capacity added in 2007 was wind energy! The actual contribution of wind energy to total electricity generation in 2007 was roughly 119 TWh (including 4 TWh offshore) which corresponds to around 3.7% of total EU electricity demand (as wind is an intermittent energy source only part of its capacity can actually be used). This is enough to satisfy the needs of around 30 million average EU households!

More than two thirds of total EU wind capacity is currently installed in the three pioneering countries Germany, Spain and Denmark. Denmark satisfies more than 20% and Spain more than 10% of its electricity demand by wind energy.

The EU is a front-runner in wind energy and a lead player on the global market. In 2007 more than half of the global installed wind capacity is located in the EU and European wind turbine manufacturers accounted in 2006 for around 75% of the global market. However, countries like the USA, China, India and Korea have remarkably increased their efforts in recent years and accounted for more than half of the newly added capacity in 2007.

 

Future prospects

Wind energy industry has set itself very ambitious targets for the next decades (see table below). The industry hopes that wind energy can satisfy 20% of total EU electricity demand by 2020 and 33% by 2030. This requires a drastic reduction of costs (manufacturing, transport, erection and maintenance costs) - 20% by 2020. The sector estimated that the additional investment required to achieve this target is around EUR 6 billion over the next ten years.

In the context of the SET-Plan the industry has established a technology roadmap until 2020 that depicts the major development steps with milestones and timeframe.

click to enlarge Source: Indicative roadmap of the European Industrial Initiative on Wind Energy (October 2009)

 

Hurdles to be overcome by research

Increasing wind deployment needs to be accompanied by increased grid flexibility and developments in storage technologies. Current electricity transmission and distribution systems have been designed and developed to manage more traditional generation technologies, and are not appropriate for large-scale wind penetration, whether centralised or distributed. Increasing shares of wind energy will require a new grid philosophy and flexible, robust transmission and distribution grid infrastructures. Given that wind is an unpredictable and fluctuating energy source, the further development of energy storage mechanisms is another key prerequisite for large-scale wind deployment. In addition, wind technology needs to be tested at an appropriate (large) scale and under relevant climatic conditions.

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