There has been a lot of talk in the wind industry over the wind industry in recent years about China and its efforts to carve out a share of the turbine manufacturing sector. And with good reason.

China’s potential is borne out by its position in 2010’s league for capacity installed. Vestas is still number one, but Chinese manufacturers are littered throughout the top 10. In second place is Sinovel, which elbowed GE into third. Goldwind, Dongfang, Guodian are among those following up.

However, a large portion of the capacity installed by the Chinese was in China.

Out of the Chinese manufacturers in the top 10, only Goldwind is making a serious effort to break the all-important US market. It is developing the 106MW Shady Oaks project in Illinois, which it also owns, in an effort to build that all-important service record.

Others building smaller projects include Sany Electric and Guodian.

Will they drive western manufacturers out of the market? If you look beneath the surface, they have a number of obstacles to overcome before they reach this position.

Firstly most of the designs are bought off-the-shelf from European designers. Sinovel have used AMSC’s Windtec designs, Goldwind’s 1.5MW Shady Oaks turbine was acquired from Vensys, Dongfang and Mingyang's designs comefrom Garrad Hassan and Aerodyn respectively. The Guodian 1.5MW turbine (see pic) currently being installed in Texas was also designed by Aerodyn.

The big strength China has in its manufacturing base, but this is one industry where that is unlikely to stand. Government subsidies mean that most of the turbine's components will have to be manufactured in the country its being installed in. Nothing illustrates this better than Goldwind’s Shady Oaks project, which will use US-made towers and blades provided by Broadwind and LM respectively. In terms of manufacturing it will be a level playing field in the western markets, which leaves everything down to design and service record.

Interestingly, Sinovel seem to be taking a different track and have been targeting Africa and European nations such as Greece and Ireland. One wonders whether it will be easier to import turbines into those countries, although it has an assembly factory in Greece.

Maybe China’s strength will come down to whether the country can continue to build its wind capacity on such a massive scale.

Meet the Aerogenerator X. It has been designed by a group of companies including QinetiQ and Arup, has a 10MW rating and a rotor diameter of 270 metres. Moreover, it could be Britain’s answer to the domination of Vestas, Siemens in the offshore wind turbine market.

 

Somewhat controversially, the turbine uses a vertical axis design. Although this means it can capture wind from every direction, the huge design also requires an effective output control system. To handle this the designers are looking at a number of options such as pitch-able blades.

 

On paper, the turbine seems like a great idea. It would also be a British turbine targeted at what is the biggest offshore market in the world with 33GW planned for development by 2030. More importantly, the UK is planning to spend around $325 billion on wind (or at least they need to if they not going to run out of electricity in 20 years time).

 

Yet most of these turbines are likely to be built by foreign companies. If so, they will be ‘safe products’ like Siemens’ 6MW turbine, which uses technology developed on smaller turbines such as the offshore workhorse the SWT-3.6.

 

The problem is that offshore wind is a risk adverse market. If you are going to put a turbine out in the middle of the North Sea then you are going to go for low maintenance over capacity. A good illustration of this is the debate going on re direct drive and gears in offshore turbines.

 

You can’t help but wonder why they Aerogenerator X team didn’t go for a horizontal model built on a design from Aerodyn (the strategy works for China). Maybe it's because the British have such a history of inventing things, like html, that they are going for the killer app.

 

The thing is offshore wind does not want revolution, it wants reliability.

 

 

For all the talk about next generation offshore wind turbines, its easy to forget the biggest wind turbine in the world is designed for onshore use. Moreover, it's designed by Enercon, a company that has no interest in hitting the offshore market.

The E-126 is 7.5MW. The current version was upgraded from 6MW in 2007 without the need to design new rotor blades.

However, despite its impressive size only 25 have been built to date. One wonders whether it will be the last of its kind as the onshore market shifts to 3MW low wind speed turbines. While Enercon itself has said it plans to concentrate on smaller onshore products such as a revamped E-82 and the new E-101 turbine, both of which are 3MW.

It would be a shame if this is the case, although I can understand that there might be problems with town planning in terms of getting approval for a few of these.

 

Ikea has further extended its wind farm portfolio with the acquisition of a 12.3MW project in Scotland. The flatpack furniture retailer has now has the allen keys for almost 100MW of wind projects spread out across Europe.

The move is part of Ikea’s ‘Ikea Goes Renewable’ strategy, which aims to offset its stores’ energy usage. It has also bought into solar projects in the US.

The move by brands to get into renewables is nothing new, retailers have been putting solar panels and small wind turbines on their stores for years. However, many see it as a good way of making money through PPA’s etc and ploughing this back into ‘savings for customers’.

The best example of a brand getting into wind is Google, which is putting multi-millions into transmission lines and the acquisition of wind projects.

For most this sort of investment is out of reach. For these Vestas and GWEC are set to launch their Windmade initiative. This allows brands to put the Windmade logo on their products to show they were 'made from wind energy'.

The mark is awarded to companies on the basis of their investment in wind and their energy usage.

Nice idea. But the problem behind all of these initiatives in terms of communicating them to consumers is that you can’t choose where your electricity will come from. Fairtrade, now they can get that. Furthermore, I wonder whether wind energy has won the argument with the general public.

Still at least someone’s trying…

 

The goldrush to build a next generation wind turbine for the UK's 33GW Round 3 offshore development is currently on. Manufacturers including Vestas, Alstom and Nordex have 6-7MW turbines lined up but the launches have all been missing one vital component - an actual product.

Renderings have been used for all of the launch presentations. It's good to see illustrators being kept in business but I can't help but feel launching a turbine with a drawing is a bit like opening a film premiere with a synopsis. You need to see the thing actually works.

One manufacturer who shares this philosophy is Siemens. The company, which has probably the best offshore turbine in the world at the moment in its 3.6MW machine, refused to officially launch its 6MW offshore product until it had constructed one at its Danish test site.

It may have launched later than Vestas' V164, but Siemens has the edge in the race as the first V164 is still to be built. Now it will be onto testing.

At the end of the day though, there is one manufacturer who may have the edge over all of the offshore manufacturers. BARD has its own 400MW offshore wind farm in Germany, which is expected to be fully operational by next year. In offshore everything is about service record and in this BARD potentially has a race winning advantage.

It's only problem is it won't be manufacturing in the UK, but then with a massive 33GW required that's unlikely to be a problem.

 

 

I see Iberdrola and Gamesa are ending their three-year deal to develop wind projects.

The reasons:

due to the global economic downturn, which has substantially changed market conditions, and the companies’ respective strategies.

Hmm… nothing to do with Gamesa’s substantial multi-GW supply deals with Longyuan then?