Wind Power Development: Opportunities and Challenges

In this study, the prospects of wind power at the global level are reviewed. Existing studies indicate that the earth’s wind energy supply potential significantly exceeds global energy demand. Yet, only 1% of the global electricity demand is currently derived from wind power despite 40% annual growth in wind generating capacity over the last 25 years. More than 98% of total current wind power capacity is installed in the developed countries plus China and India. Existing studies estimate that wind power could supply 7% to 34% of global electricity needs by 2050. Wind power faces a large number of technical, financial, institutional, market and other barriers. To overcome these, many countries have employed various policy instruments, including capital subsidies, tax incentives, tradable energy certificates, feed-in tariffs, grid access guarantees and mandatory standards. Besides these policies, climate change mitigation initiatives resulting from the Kyoto Protocol (e.g., CO2-emission reduction targets in developed, the Clean Development Mechanism in developing countries) have played a pivotal role in promoting wind power.wind energy, renewable energy, electricity grids

Review on the Conflicts between Offshore Wind Power and Fishery Rights: Marine Spatial Planning in Taiwan

In recent years, Taiwan has firmly committed itself to pursue the green energy transition and a nuclear-free homeland by 2025, with an increase in renewable energy from 5% in 2016 to 20% in 2025. Offshore wind power (OWP) has become a sustainable and scalable renewable energy source in Taiwan. Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) is a fundamental tool to organize the use of the ocean space by different and often conflicting multi-users within ecologically sustainable boundaries in the marine environment. MSP is capable of definitively driving the use of offshore renewable energy. Lessons from Germany and the UK revealed that MSP was crucial to the development of OWP. This paper aims to evaluate how MSP is able to accommodate the exploitation of OWP in Taiwan and contribute to the achievement of marine policy by proposing a set of recommendations. It concludes that MSP is emerging as a solution to be considered by government institutions to optimize the multiple use of the ocean space, reduce conflicts and make use of the environmental and economic synergies generated by the joint deployment of OWP facilities and fishing or aquaculture activities for the conservation and protection of marine environments.Peer Reviewe

OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY STUDY AND ITS IMPACT ON SOUTH CAROLINA TRANSMISSION SYSTEM

As one of the renewable resources, wind energy is developing dramatically in last ten years. Offshore wind energy, with more stable speed and less environmental impact than onshore wind, will be the direction of large scale wind industry. Large scale wind farm penetration affects power system operation, planning and control. Studies concerning type III turbine based wind farm integration problems such as wind intermittency, harmonics, low voltage ride through capability have made great progress. However, there are few investigations concerning switching transient impacts of large scale type III turbine based offshore wind farm in transmission systems. This topic will gain more attention as type III wind generator based offshore wind farm capacity is increasing, and most of these large scale offshore wind farms are injected into transmission system. As expected to take one third of the whole wind energy by 2030, the large offshore wind energy need to be thoroughly studied before its integration particularly the switching transient impacts of offshore wind farms. In this dissertation, steady state impact of large scale offshore wind farms on South Carolina transmission system is studied using PSSE software for the first time. At the same time, the offshore wind farm configuration is designed; SC transmission system thermal and voltage limitation are studied with different amount of wind energy injection. The best recommendation is given for the location of wind power injection buses. Switching transient also impacts is also studied in using actual South Carolina transmission system. The equivalent wind farm model for switching transient is developed in PSCAD software and different level of wind farm penetration evaluates the transient performance of the system. A new mathematical method is developed to determine switching transient impact of offshore wind farm into system with less calculation time. This method is based on the frequency domain impedance model. Both machine part and control part are included in this model which makes this representation unique. The new method is compared with a well-established PSCAD method for steady state and transient responses. With this method, the DFIG impact on system transients can be studied without using time-domain simulations, which gives a better understanding of the transient behaviors and parameters involved in them. Additionally, for large scale offshore wind energy, a critical problem is how to transmit large offshore wind energy from the ocean efficiently and ecumenically. The evaluation of different offshore wind farm transmission system such as HVAC and HVDC is investigated in the last chapter

Wind power development : economics and policies

This study reviews the prospects of wind power at the global level. Existing studies indicate that the earth's wind energy supply potential significantly exceeds global energy demand. Yet, only 1 percent of the global electricity demand is currently derived from wind power despite 40 percent annual growth in wind generating capacity over the past 25 years. More than 98 percent of total current wind power capacity is installed in the developed countries plus China and India. It has been estimated that wind power could supply 7 to 34 percent of global electricity needs by 2050. However, wind power faces a large number of technical, economic, financial, institutional, market, and other barriers. To overcome these barriers, many countries have employed various policy instruments, including capital subsidies, tax incentives, tradable energy certificates, feed-in tariffs, grid access guarantees and mandatory standards. Besides these policies, climate change mitigation initiatives resulting from the Kyoto Protocol (e.g., CO2-emission reduction targets in developed countries and the Clean Development Mechanism in developing countries) have played a significant role in promoting wind power.Energy Production and Transportation,Carbon Policy and Trading,Windpower,Environment and Energy Efficiency,Energy and Environment

Concrete Support Structures for Offshore Wind Turbines: Current Status, Challenges, and Future Trends

Today’s offshore wind turbine support structures market is largely dominated by steel structures, since steel monopiles account for the vast majority of installations in the last decade and new types of multi-leg steel structures have been developed in recent years. However, as wind turbines become bigger, and potential sites for offshore wind farms are located in ever deeper waters and ever further from the shore, the conditions for the design, transport, and installation of support structures are changing. In light of these facts, this paper identifies and categorizes the challenges and future trends related to the use of concrete for support structures of future offshore wind projects. To do so, recent advances and technologies still under development for both bottom-fixed and floating concrete support structures have been reviewed. It was found that these new developments meet the challenges associated with the use of concrete support structures, as they will allow the production costs to be lowered and transport and installation to be facilitated. New technologies for concrete support structures used at medium and great water depths are also being developed and are expected to become more common in future offshore wind installations. Therefore, the new developments identified in this paper show the likelihood of an increase in the use of concrete support structures in future offshore wind farms. These developments also indicate that the complexity of future support structures will increase due to the development of hybrid structures combining steel and concrete. These evolutions call for new knowledge and technical know-how in order to allow reliable structures to be built and risk-free offshore installation to be executed

Technological progress observed for fixed-bottom offshore wind in the EU and UK

Offshore wind is a rapidly maturing low-carbon energy technology, for which the technology cost has increased before starting to decline. In literature, the cost development trends of offshore wind and factors responsible were poorly studied. Understanding the factors contributing to the cost developments and their individual impacts are vital for long-term energy policy actions and investment decisions. Therefore, this study combined three different but highly complementary quantitative methodologies to analyze the technological progress observed for fixed-bottom offshore wind in the EU and UK. The technology diffusion curve was first applied to identify the individual development phases of offshore wind technology. Then, the cost developments observed across the identified phases were quantified using experience curve and bottom-up cost modeling methodologies. In the formative phase of the development process, the offshore wind farm's specific capital expenditure had increased from 2 M€/MW in 2000 to 5 M€/MW in 2010, thereby resulting in negative LR. The increase in specific capital expenditure increased the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) from ~110 €/MWh to above 150 €/MWh. After that, during the upscaling and growth phase, the specific capital expenditure declined from 5.4 M€/MW in 2011 to 3.3 M€/MW in 2020. LR of 8–11 % was observed for specific capital expenditure in this phase. In the same phase, the LCoE declined more rapidly than the specific capital expenditure, i.e., from roughly 150 €/MWh in 2011 to 69 €/MWh in 2020, a 54 % decline. This rapid decline observed in recent years was due to the favorable financing conditions, increased capacity factor, and decreased technology costs, including investment and operational costs. Based on the technological progress assessed for offshore wind and its contributing factors in this study, we also estimated the near-term offshore wind LCoE, 55 €/MWh in 2021–2023 and 48 €/MWh in 2024–2026, which aligns well with recent auction outcomes

How Expensive Is Expensive Enough? Opportunities for Cost Reductions in Offshore Wind Energy Logistics.

This paper reveals that logistics may conservatively amount to 18% of the levelized cost of energy for offshore wind farms. This is the key finding from an extensive case study carried out within the organization of the world’s leading offshore wind farm developer and operator. The case study aimed to, and produced, a number of possible opportunities for offshore wind cost reductions through logistics innovation; however, within the case study company, no company-wide logistics organization existed to focus horizontally on reducing logistics costs in general. Logistics was not well defined within the case study company, and a logistics strategy did not exist. With full life-cycle costs of offshore wind farms still high enough to present a political challenge within the European Union in terms of legislation to ensure offshore wind diffusion beyond 2020, our research presents logistics as a next frontier for offshore wind constituencies. This important area of the supply chain is ripe to academically and professionally cultivate and harvest in terms of offshore wind energy cost reductions. Our paper suggests that a focused organizational approach for logistics both horizontally and vertically within the company organizations could be the way forward, coupled with a long-term legislative environment to enable the necessary investments in logistics assets and transport equipment