Recharge Agenda
Global Wind Summit – seize the opportunity
Last week’s Global Wind Summit in Hamburg, by some distance the sector’s biggest event of 2018, showed the world an industry confident of its central role in the world’s future energy mix – but one that also knows challenges lie ahead.
That tone was set on the eve of the event at Recharge’s own annual invitation-only Thought Leaders Summit, where a top-level delegation of influencers from the wind, solar, storage and wider energy transition sectors gathered to hear how even amid spectacular growth, renewables shouldn’t take its future dominance of the global energy sector for granted in the face of protean political opposition, ongoing pressure on costs and unanswered questions about variable production.
The message was reinforced in a barnstorming opening oration by WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson, who warned that wind power would have to “fight for every new turbine” and show its value in terms of jobs and economic growth if it was to achieve its fullest potential as a power source and global industry.
Dickson’s words reverberated widely on day one in Hamburg, not least in WindEurope’s latest market study, which outlined one scenario in which wind could install more than 20GW per year from 2030-50 and cover 36% of Europe’s power generation by the middle of the century.
That growth would come against a background of breaking new ground – the overarching theme of the Global Wind Summit – in new markets and new sectors such as electric vehicles, with Enercon CEO Hans-Dieter Kettwig telling Recharge how wind is perfectly placed to lead the energy transition, by undergoing its own transformation – through sector-coupling – into a role that is “beyond” being only a power source.
Offshore’s fair trade-winds
Offshore, the Global Wind Summit saw yet another capacity milestone for the industry when OEM MHI Vestas announced it would have a 10MW version of its V164 turbine ready for 2021, becoming the first in the industry to deliver a double-digit-rating machine.
News of the record-setting turbine, revealed first exclusively in Recharge, was claimed by MHI Vestas CEO Philippe Kavafyan as “important both in production terms and psychologically” for an industry that he, like a fast-growing number, sees as a main “engine” for the energy transition – and it certainly fits the mood of an offshore wind sector that’s on a historic updraft.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) used the Global Wind Summit to give offshore wind its blessing as a “rising global force on the energy landscape”, with executive director Fatih Birol telling the event that capacity could approach 200GW by 2040, with the potential for plenty more with the right policy framework – a statement generally heard as portending that offshore wind will get a first serious mention in the IEA’s upcoming World Energy Outlook.
Elsewhere on the offshore agenda, tenders and subsidies – or the lack of them – loomed large. Recharge revealed that Poland won’t be holding an offshore wind tender in 2019 and may instead consider direct support, and that Vattenfall expects the next process in the Netherlands to be another zero-subsidy round.
Floating wind was never far from the centre of discussions at the Global Wind Summit, and WindEurope offered a timely warning to European nations and the EU that they must take “urgent” steps to cement the continent’s first-mover advantage in the sector, or see volumes of utility-scale power – including 16GW off France, to go by RTE-ratified calculations – ebb away.
Onshore wind rises to the challenge of change
For the onshore sector, the Global Wind Summit reflected the priorities of a market where change is the order of the day.
That’s manifesting itself in ever-larger turbines – such as the up-to-5.3MW Cypress platform unveiled by GE Renewable Energy in Hamburg – and the role for renewed innovation, a theme picked by Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath, CEO at E.ON Climate & Renewables, who sees sectors such as e-mobility, and heating and cooling, as an opportunity to be embraced.
Change can be unsettling too, and there was plenty of soul-searching among the German market, which led Europe’s onshore wind charge but now faces a policy-induced steep drop in installations that has ominous implications for its supply chain.
The sales chief of Vestas in Germany labelled the impending downturn a “huge hit for the industry”, while ministers from five states used the Global Wind Summit to demand the federal government acts on earlier pledges to auction 4GW of extra onshore capacity to steady the industry in this period of cross-winds.
Finally, GE Renewable Energy proved itself nimble at responding to changing circumstances, as Recharge revealed the OEM has all but replaced the 2GW of turbine orders that would have gone to the recently collapsed Wind Catcher project in Oklahoma.
Digitalisation the watchword
Digitalisation was among the key themes of the Global Wind Summit, with senior EU official Patrick Child spelling out why it must be a priority focus area for Europe’s wind sector.
Child, deputy director-general at the European Commission’s Research and Innovation department, told a WindEurope Conference session that digitalisation offers huge potential for cost saving in O&M.
That message was heavily underlined by two events that added a dash of competition to the Global Wind Summit.
Online wind farm operations game The Wind Challenge saw 700 competitors from 40 countries harness the power of digitalisation to boost the financial performance of a virtual project by a total of €850m ($998m).
Digitalisation was also central to the second Hack the Wind hackathon, which ran on the sidelines of the Global Wind Summit and challenged teams to tackle two tasks over 48 hours.
