Design limits and solutions for very large wind turbines

2008
250 m Ø
160 m Ø
Rotor diameter (m)
112 m Ø
126 m Ø
126 m Ø
?
Airbus A380
wing span
80m
15 m Ø
'85 '87 '89 '91 '93 '95 '97 '99 '01 '03 '05 '10 ? 1 ST year of operation
.05 .3 .5 1.3 1.6 2 4.5 5 7.5 8/10 rated capacity (MW)
An innovation accelerator was required that could set
clear pathways for future development and rapidly
transfer technological advances to the market. In order
to shape such a vehicle, the wind industry created
what was known as a ‘ Wind Energy Thematic Network ’
(WEN), an initiative supported as a project by the European
Commission. Through an extended consultation
process, WEN identified the key innovation areas and
put forward recommendations to address the declining
public R&D funding in the wind energy sector. The
WEN placed wind energy innovation in the context of
the newly adopted Lisbon strategy for the first time 7 :
wind energy was identified as being able to improve
European competitiveness.
In 2005 WEN published a roadmap for innovation, which
was the first Strategic Research Agenda for the wind
energy sector. This document was used as a basis for
the European Wind Energy Technology Platform. TPWind
updated the Strategic Research Agenda and developed
an industry-led master plan with a total R&D budget of
€6 billion up to 2020: the European Wind Industrial Initiative
(EWI). The recently created European Energy Research
Alliance (EERA) reinforces this trend by putting
more emphasis on long-term research. The UpWind proposal
and consortium, financed by the European Commission
under the sixth Framework Programme (FP6),
was developed in parallel with the creation of the Technology
Platform by the sector involving individual key
institutions and companies with the European Academy
of Wind Energy (EAWE) and the European Wind Energy
Association (EWEA) as essential catalysers. Building on
UpWind‘s achievements, EERA and EWI together cover
the main road of designing the European wind energy
technology of the future and helping to meet the EU‘s
2020 renewable energy targets, and beyond.
7
One objective was a level of spending of 3% of the EU GDP in R&D in 2010. The Lisbon objective was not achieved,
and the strategy was relaunched through the recent Europe 2020 strategy.
Design limits and solutions for very large wind turbines
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