• Energy Research
• 2015 close

Wind power plays a crucial role in Europe’s strategy towards a zero-carbon, clean energy-powered economy. While efforts have primarily focused on the development of wind turbine technology, it starts to become evident that the planning associated with the end-of-service life of these equipment has been vastly neglected. Rotor blades are a particularly challenging component, as there is uncertainty about how to get rid of them properly and safely. Furthermore, their sheer huge size imposes important constraints on the trucking requirements for their transportation, which translates in significant costs for decommissioning and disposal. EcoBlade presents a disruptive concept which tackles the cumbersome transportation of decommissioned large size rotor blades. Our mobile separation platform relies on a modular system optimized for blade shredding and material separation. It also opens the path towards profitable and economically sustainable value chains aiming at the revalorization of the disposed blade material. Since existing experience on blades’ decommissioning is still limited, disposal best practices are still to be defined. Therefore, the development of our scalable platform currently holds important economic risks, given the uncertainty on market acceptance. For this reason, Frandsen Industri firmly believes that a two-phase approach under EU-funding is the ideal scenario, in order to initially assess the market for concept feasibility before initiating the innovation project. Ecoblade will serve as a key enabler for future decommissioning of rotor blades, allowing to save more than 60 M€ in transportation costs for the disposed blades during the 2020-2030 period. Moreover, the successful implementation of EcoBlade will also significantly enhance the profitability of Frandsen Industri, as its successful implementation would return an expected turnover of nearly €5 million, 5 years post-project, corresponding to over €1.6 million profit to our company.

INGECID is a renowned engineering company focused on developing innovative constructive processes applied to wind energy, where the cost of installations is dominated by the CAPEX of wind turbines (ca. 84%). While the need of minimizing the costs per installed MW has not been yet successfully addressed, the cost-effective redesign of taller wind turbine towers is now indispensable due to: a) the limited height (ca. 85m) and the fatigue vulnerability of actual towers, which hamper wind turbines harnessing higher wind velocities, at greater altitudes and for longer times (thus from delivering more electric power: P≈v3); b) the load needs for bearing heavier turbines (150 tons), and c) the costs of actual alternatives (hybrid steel/concrete and precast concrete towers) that have avoidable expenses of lifting, maintenance and transport. In this context, INGECID will become a reference within the tower manufacturing business (predicted global market investment of 17.11 bn€ by 2020, at a CAGR of 6.9%) by offering a 140m cost-competitive in-situ monolithic concrete tower solution for 3 MW wind turbines: LiraTower. This novel tower design, patent requested, surpasses actual solutions due to: a) its height (above hitherto reports of 120-137m); b) its unique design of internal and external tendons, which allow for excellent compressive strength (slender diameter of 4m), fatigue resistance and stiffness; and c) the cost reduction (ca. 30-40%) that in-situ technology offers over available solutions in market. With the proposed construction process and tower design, wind velocity increments of up to 8% and 26% higher output powers in comparison to 80m are now feasible at a competitive cost. Additionally, the drawbacks and transport costs of large tower sections, nearby prefabrication plants and on-site mechanizing are totally eliminated. Once in market, LiraTower would have a return on investment of 3.8 years, generating cumulative revenues of 9.53 M€ and 55 new direct jobs.

In recent years, research has shown that energy savings resulting from energy efficiency improvements have wider benefits for the economy and society such as increases in employment, GDP, energy security, positive impacts on health, ecosystems and crops or resource consumption. In order to develop more cost-effective energy efficiency policies and optimised long-term strategies in the EU, these multiple benefits have to be accounted for more comprehensively in the future. Although this field of research is growing, the findings are disperse and mostly have important gaps regarding geographic, sectorial or technical measure coverage and findings vary largely. This makes a consideration of multiple benefits in policy making and policy evaluation difficult today. The proposed project addresses these issues and aims at closing the identified gaps by five central research innovations: 1) data gathering on energy savings and technology costs per EU country for the most relevant 20 to 30 energy efficiency measures in the residential, commercial, industrial and transport sectors, 2) developing adequate methodologies for benefit quantification, monetisation and aggregation, 3) quantifying the most important multiple benefits and where adequate, monetising, 4) developing an openly available calculation tool that greatly simplifies the evaluation of co-impacts for specific energy efficiency measures to enable decision-making and 5) developing a simple online visualisation tool for customisable graphical analysis and assessment of multiple benefits and data exportation. Project outcomes can thus directly be used by stakeholders and will help to define cost-effective policies and support policy-makers and evaluators in the development and monitoring of energy efficiency strategies and policies in the future.

Ampyx Power develops the PowerPlane, an Airborne Wind Energy System (AWES). AWES are second generation wind turbines that use the stronger and more constant wind at altitudes between 100 and 600 meters. Project AMPYXAP3 concerns the design, construction and testing of the first article of an initial commercial PowerPlane, version AP3. The global transition to a sustainable energy supply is burdened by the exorbitant societal costs associated with it. Renewable energy infrastructure projects have extremely high capital costs, and in most cases the cost per kWh of renewable electricity produced exceeds the cost of fossil-fuelled alternatives, thus requiring subsidies or other supportive instruments from governments. The economic effects of the energy transition are very significant, including the deterioration of international competitive position of countries or regions with high ambition levels regarding climate change, such as the EU – caused by rising electricity prices for industry. PowerPlane technology will have a disruptive effect on the electricity generation sector; due to the low levelised cost of energy (LCoE) that can be achieved with it, and due to its low capital costs. The need for a low cost, low capital investment renewable energy technology is evident. The AP3 PowerPlane, to be developed in the AMPYXAP3 project, fulfils the customer need of PowerPlane technology demonstration in long-term continuous safe operation at costs and LCoE as predicted. Ampyx Power aspires to manufacture and sell PowerPlane systems, as well as deliver operational and maintenance services to wind park owners. As a consequence, Ampyx Power projects revenues from PowerPlane system sales and installations, as well as from operation and maintenance (O&M) contracts. Hence, the AMPYXAP3 project is core business for Ampyx Power.

University of Salford Energy hub

The offshore wind market is a young and rapidly growing market, whose current project pipeline for 2025/30 would equal nearly 80 nuclear plants, mostly in Europe. The next decade and beyond may average 1,000 offshore towers/year worldwide, with an overall investment volume around 15-20.000 M€/year. This growing sector faces technological challenges, as it is set to move into deeper waters further offshore while being able to reduce the costs in order to reach a competitive LCOE (levelised cost of energy). For water depths above 40m (70% of the future market) approximately 40-50% of investment corresponds to the substructure (foundation and tower). Therefore a significant cost reduction in foundation/tower would drastically improve the overall cost of offshore wind energy. This project intends to develop and demonstrate in operative environment a full scale prototype of a revolutionary substructure system for offshore wind turbines. The concept consists in a self-installing precast concrete telescopic tower which for the first time ever shall allow for crane-free offshore installation of foundations, towers and turbines, thus overcoming the constraints imposed by the dependence on offshore heavy-lift vessels. It will allow for a full in-shore preassembly of the complete system, which is key to generate a highly industrialized manufacturing process with high production rates and optimized risk control. The main benefits expected are: • 30-40% cost reduction (both CAPEX and OPEX). • Large water depth applicability range for deep offshore (>45m water depth). • Supports increased turbine size (5-8MW). • Allows for large scale fast industrial deployment of foundations. • Reduces dependence on costly and scarce installation vessels. • Improved asset integrity (durability) This solution will imply a radical step forward for cost-effective and industrially deployable deep offshore wind.

The project arises from a joint venture between Enair Energy SL and Lancor 2000 S Coop to develop a Cost efficient Small Wind Turbine (SWT) of 40 kW rated capacity (ECIWIND®).Within the wind energy sector, the small wind power is growing: According to World Wind Energy Association the small wind power market is expected to increase massively, from 768 M€ in 2013 to 2517 M€ by 2020, at a CAGR of 22%.The main challenge of the small wind energy industry is to decrease its costs to push a socialisation of this renewable technology. Thus, this electricity generation will be more competitive in the energy market and independent of the subsidies. The European Commision highliths the importance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as small energy producers and the need to empower them to take up this role. Several european SMEs such as farms (200-400 kWh/day) and small industry (200- 450 kWh/day). In the case that these end users are located in areas where annual average wind velocity is higher than 5 m/s, small wind turbines in the 10-50 kW capacity is the best option to cover their energy needs. The acquisition and commissioning costs of SWT in this capacity range rounds 4000 €/kWh and have annual maintenance average costs of 1500 €/year depending on the configuration, which makes unaffordable the investment without government subsidies. The price reduction on this capacity range can be approached through the elimination of costly parts of current technologies as the Gearbox, and the optimization of the cost/performance of the rest of components.Enair and Lancor have therefore identified a business opportunity for SWT technologies and have developed a first prototype of ECIWIND® at 10 kW scale (free-gearbox with pitch control and permanent magnet generator SWT) that requires 50% less maintenance and decrease the price to end user installed in 40%, which entails an investment payback period <6 years without any government subsidy.