Wind Turbine Technology Trends

Abstract

The rise in prices of traditional energy sources, the high dependence of many countries on their import, and the associated need for security of supply have led to large investments in new capacity of wind power plants. Although wind power generation is a mature technology and levelized cost of electricity low, there is still room for its improvement. A review of available literature has indicated that wind turbine development in the coming decade will be based on upscaling wind turbines and minor design improvements. These include further improvements in rotor blade aerodynamics, active control of the rotor blade rotation system, and aerodynamic brakes that will lead to increased power generation efficiency. Improvements in system maintenance and early diagnosis of transmission and power-related faults and blade surface damage will reduce wind turbine downtime and increase system reliability and availability. The manufacture of wind turbines with larger dimensions presents problems of transportation and assembly, which are being addressed by manufacturing the blades from segments. Numerical analysis is increasingly being used both in wind turbine efficiency analysis and in stress and vibration analysis. Direct drive is becoming more competitive with traditional power transmission through a gearbox. The trend in offshore wind farms is to increase the size of wind turbines and to place them farther from the coast and in deeper water, which requires new forms of floating foundations. Due to the different work requirements and more difficult conditions of the marine environment, optimization methods for the construction of offshore substructures are currently being developed. There are plans to use 66-kV cables for power transmission from offshore wind farms instead of the current 33-kV cables. Offshore wind farms can play an important role in the transition to a hydrogen economy. In this context, significant capacity is planned for the production of “green” hydrogen by electrolysis from water. First-generation wind turbines are nearing the end of their service life, so strategies are being developed to repower them, extend their life or dismantle and recycle them.