4 December 2024
Europe not yet reaping the benefits of repowering old wind farms
Across Europe more and more wind turbines start to reach the end of their operational lifetime. Repowering them – replacing them with new turbines – is proving to be very effective. You get more than three times as much power from the same site. But not enough repowering is happening yet.
WindEurope’s “End of Life Issues and Strategies” seminar (EoLIS 2024) started today in Gothenburg. The event showcases the latest trends in repowering, decommissioning and recycling of wind turbines.
More and more wind turbines are approaching the end of their operational lifetime and technology is rapidly advancing. But repowering – replacing older wind turbines with newer, more efficient models – is only slowly gaining traction across Europe.
“More electricity with fewer turbines – repowering is a no-brainer. But Governments are not doing enough to drive it. Most old wind farms just carry on with inefficient turbines”, said Giles Dickson, WindEurope CEO.
Data analysed by WindEurope shows that nowadays repowering on average reduces the number of turbines in a wind farm by 25%, while more than tripling the output of the wind farm and quadrupling the output per wind turbine.
Reasons for the improved efficiency of modern turbines include longer rotor blades which increase the overall swept area of the turbine, higher capacity factors, improved aerodynamics through improvements in blade design, more stable electricity generation in times of low wind speeds as well as advanced control systems which optimise the real-time operation of the turbines.
“The European Commission has put forward key permitting and repowering provisions in the revised Renewable Energy Directive. They now need to be implemented. We believe repowering should be a big contributor to achieving our energy and climate targets. Accelerating implementation efforts is a key priority for the new Commission. We will support the Member States here”, said Paula Rey Garcia, Deputy Head of Unit for Renewables and Energy System Integration Policy at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Energy.
Not all countries are reaping the benefits of repowering
The repowering of wind farms is not equally distributed between EU Member States. More than half of all repowered projects are located in Germany. This is partly because Germany is the biggest market for wind energy in Europe and home to many first-generation wind farms. But that’s not all. Other Member States are not doing enough to reap the benefits of repowering.
Spain, Europe’s second largest onshore wind energy market, only hosts 3% of repowered projects. Grid connections for repowered wind farms are so difficult to get that developers prefer to simply keep the old turbines running. Spain is easily giving away its massive repowering potential here.
France in turn is missing out on the advantages of repowering due to their restrictive tip height rules that don’t allow them to build the latest and most efficient onshore wind turbines.
Many other Member States are lacking effective repowering strategies. Across Europe overly cumbersome and long permitting procedures are holding back the much-needed uptake of repowering.
“The oldest wind farms are usually in the best wind sites – because they were the first to be built. But if we don’t repower them then they have the least efficient turbines. That needs to change. Governments must implement the excellent new EU permitting rules, which make it easier to repower. Repowering ticks all the boxes: you use the old site, you don’t need a brand new grid connection – and the local communities support the wind farm and the benefits it brings and want it to continue”, said Giles Dickson.
How does the wind industry deal with increasing volumes of blade waste?
EoLIS 2024 also focused on decommissioning and recycling. 85-90% of modern wind turbines can be recycled via well-established recycling streams. The composite materials used in wind turbine blades pose the main challenge on the path to fully recyclable wind turbines. These composites make up around 11% of the total volume of a turbine and cannot be easily recycled.
Currently volumes of end-of-life blades are still relatively low. They are fully absorbed by recovery methods such as cement co-processing or used in upcycling and repurposing projects which use old turbine blades to produce furniture, boats, bridges, playgrounds, tiny houses, bike racks and much more.
But this is soon set to change. As more and more turbines start to reach the end of their operational lifetime the resulting volumes of annual blade waste are estimated to gradually increase to more than 100,000 tonnes by 2040.
Participants at EoLIS 2024 discussed merging technologies and policies aimed at reducing blade waste. They highlighted the need for more cross-sector collaboration to help pool the composite waste volumes required to kickstart economically viable recycling solutions. They also discussed how dedicated waste codes for wind turbine composite waste could help establish a business case for different recycling technologies.
