Applications and Wind Industry - Wind Energy: Renewable Energy and the Environment - page 197

10 Applications and

Wind Industry

The main applications are the generation of electricity and water pumping ( Table 10.1 ). Except for the
installed capacity for wind farms, the other numbers are best estimates, as data are difficult to acquire.
Applications for generation of electricity are divided into the following categories: utility-scale wind
farms; small wind turbines, which include remote and stand-alone systems; distributed; wind-diesel;
village power (generally hybrid systems); and telecommunications (high-reliability hybrid systems).
Many village power systems use photovoltaic panels with battery storage, 1 to 3 days. There are wind
hybrid systems and some wind power systems for village power. In some cases village power has
diesel/gas for the backup. Stand-alone systems generally have batteries for storage.
There are wind-assist, where two power sources work in parallel to produce power on demand,
and stand-alone systems. All wind turbines connected to the utility grid are wind-assist systems.
In terms of size, wind turbines range from the utility-scale megawatt turbines for wind farms to
small systems (a100 kW) also connected to the grid to the 20-300 W remote units for sailboats and
households, primarily in the developing world. Some people refer to these as micro wind turbines.
Be careful of some vendors claiming that micro wind turbines will produce electricity cheaper than
utility-scale wind turbines, as all you need to do is to connect a large number of them together.

10.1 UTILITY SCALE
The 94,000 MW installed at the end of 2007 produces an estimated 300 TWh/year. In Europe, the
1995 goal of 4,000 MW of wind by the year 2000 was way surpassed, and the later 2010 goal was set
at 60,000 MW. In 2003 that was raised to a goal of 75,000 MW, and by 2007 there were already 57,000
MW installed, which generated 3.7% of the electrical demand. Now the European goal is 20% of elec-
tricity generated by renewables by 2020, of which 12-14% would be from wind. Of course, predictions
are always risky, and the predicted megawatts change as projects and legislation are implemented and
also changed. In Denmark, wind turbines supplied 21% of the electric consumption in 2007.
Offshore wind farms have been installed in Europe [1], with a capacity of 1,079 MW by the end
of 2007. Examples are Horns Rev at 160 MW [2] and Nysted at 158 MW in Denmark. Offshore
wind farms are being considered in the United States; however, there is substantial opposition to a
wind farm off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In the United States, there are four wind farms in Texas,
which range in size from 523 to 736 MW, and John Deere is installing clusters of 10 MW wind
farms. The 10 MW size allows for less regulation, but in clusters there are enough wind turbines to
obtain economies of scale in installation.
In 2007 there were around 14,800 wind turbines installed in thirty-five countries in the world,
with a capacity around 20,000 MW. This was a growth rate of 32% from the previous year (see
Figure 1.12 ), and 43% were installed in Europe. Notice that the average size of wind turbines is now
over 1 MW. The Global Wind Energy Council lists installed capacity in 2007 by region ( Table 10.2 )
and each country within the region [3]. The United States was the largest market, followed by China
and Spain. The growth of wind power in China was phenomenal (over double), as 3,304 MW was
installed in 2007 [4], and the goal of 5,000 MW by 2010 was reached 3 years ahead of schedule.
The domestic wind turbine industry in China accounted for 56% of the 2007 market, and two com-
panies, Goldwind and Sinovel, accounted for 46% of the 3,304 MW, which also places them in the
top ten suppliers in the world.

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