Design and development of megawatt wind turbines - Wind Power Generation and Wind Turbine Design - page 249

See Wiser et al. [42] for additional insight into U.S. wind power installation,
cost, and performance trends.
The developer expenses proportion of total project costs drops as turbine rating is
increased. Many developer costs, such as legal fees and title insurance, are not depen-
dent on the machine selected. The total cost of these expenses are mainly dependent
on the plant rating and not turbine rating. For a baseline or constant WPP rating, the
total installed cost of a plant increases with turbine rating, so a reduced proportion of
project costs for the developer are observed as turbine rating is increased.
The proportion of transportation cost increases slightly with rating, assuming
technologies and designs for larger machines account for reasonable shipping
limitations. The same savings found with BOP costs (because of reduced numbers
of turbines for a fi xed WPP size) are not realized in transportation. This is because
transportation cost increases rapidly with rating due to the limited availability of
136 tonnes (150 ton) capacity 18-axle trailers in the United States. The 82-tonne
(90 ton) capacity 13-axle trailers needed to ship the components of turbines with
ratings less than approximately 2 3 MW are more readily available. Shipping a

component 1000 miles on an 18-axle trailer is approximately fi ve times the cost of
using a 13-axle trailer. Additional costs are further observed for larger turbines
because their components must be partially disassembled to allow transportation
even on the large capacity 18-axle trailers [57].

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5.2 Intellectual property (IP)

One of the most important activities for any technical organization is the ability to
create and document IP as a natural part of their everyday engineering activities.
For the wind industry today, obtaining patent protection for innovation must be a
top priority. The industry is still young, and there is plenty of open IP landscape.
Once new designs and methods are devised, these investments must be protected
as they can provide additional income from licensing and sales.
Larger OEMs start the process of evaluating invention potential using an invention
disclosure letter (IDL) process that contains the following elements:

1. A brief explanation of the invention.

2. Description of how the invention works (being very specifi c and including fi gures

and images).
Description of the problem that is solved by the invention.

3.

4. Descriptions of any prior attempts at solving the problem and how others

may have tried to address the problem before.
Relating the technical and commercial advantages for the invention. 5.

6. Explanation of how someone could design around the invention.

5.3 Permitting and perceptions

Know your markets - local ordinances typically specify max turbine rotor dia-
meters, overall heights, and max noise emissions. These need to be accounted for
new designs.