L'articolo European Clean Energy: The State of the Art proviene da GEVI.

L'articolo Europe’s Energy Price Volatility Is Forcing a Rethink of Where Power Comes From proviene da GEVI.

vol. 16

20 October 2023

ROME MAKER FAIRE

Venite a trovarci al Rome Maker Faire – The European Edition, da dal 20 al 22 Ottobre.

L'articolo ROME MAKER FAIRE proviene da GEVI.

vol. 15

29 June 2023

GEVI’S FUTURE: FLOATING OFF-SHORE

By Edoardo Simonelli, Eleonora Cacchio

The potential of offshore wind power is well known, but the complexity of installation and maintenance processes poses significant challenges.

The main issue lies in the foundations. The sea floor’s depths below 50 meters prevents the installation of wind farms far from land where they could take advantage of wind intensity at higher altitudes and latitudes.

In recent years, new designs for offshore wind power systems on floating platforms are being developed to be able to produce energy on the deep sea. However, this is not yet a competitive solution since the cost of the floating offshore platform increases as the size of the unit it supports grows and as the height of the wind unit’s center of mass rises.

In other words, the tall rotor height of traditional wind turbines (HAWT) requires large floating platforms to balance the center of mass and prevent the structure from capsizing during extreme weather conditions.

The future of offshore wind power definitely remains on floating platforms, and GEVI turbines are perfect to make it happen!

Firstly, their lightweight structure and low center of mass greatly reduce the minimum size of platforms needed to support them and simplify maintenance processes. Moreover, the gyroscopic effect around the vertical axis helps to stabilize the balance of the turbines.

In addition, it is possible to install multiple turbines close together and create “energy islands” in deep sea with improving their overall productivity and sharing the power electronic optimizing also the energy distribution process. Artificial intelligence (A.I.) and active blade pitch control enable interconnection between turbines; they will exchange data with each other and proactively adapt to strong sea winds, enhancing their performance.

L'articolo GEVI’S FUTURE: FLOATING OFF-SHORE proviene da GEVI.

vol. 14

25 May 2023

OFFSHORE WIND POWER DEVELOPMENT 

By Edoardo Simonelli, Eleonora Cacchio

Only 12% of European wind power capacity is currently offshore, i.e., installed on the seabed or floating on the deep sea and connected to submarine power lines to conduct electricity to the distribution grid.

That’s because the installation, operation and maintenance costs of offshore wind farms are far higher than onshore of installations, just think of the differences between transporting by land and by sea the equipment needed to perform any kind of maintenance operation on the wind turbine. In addition, offshore systems are subject to a greater rate of erosion or risk of damage due to wave action and strong winds that develop during storms. 

Technological and engineering improvements in the last few years have made it possible to increase the reliability of the blades by reducing some of the maintenance costs, but we are still a long way from the true “green revolution” that would take place if governments incentivized the development of offshore wind power. 

With 11.700 square kilometers of coastline, Italy is particularly well-suited for the deployment of this technology, which is the basis for national energy renewal according to the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC).

In particular, at least 900 MW of offshore wind farms are planned to be installed to achieve the 2030 climate and energy targets.  

The first offshore wind power installation in the Mediterranean Sea, which is called Beleolico, has a capacity of 30 MW and was inaugurated on 21 April 2022 off the coast of Taranto. It can cover the annual energy needs of about 60.000 households by producing 58.000 MWh/year and will save 730.000 tons of carbon dioxide over the next 25 years according to experts. 

What are the main reasons that drove the attention of national governments to offshore wind power? Certainly, its advantages over onshore wind power, such as:

• the greater reliability of the energy source since offshore, where there is no obstacle whatsoever, the wind is stronger and more constant than onshore;  
• the lower environmental and noise impact since the wind turbines are located beyond the visible horizon line. 

L'articolo OFFSHORE WIND POWER DEVELOPMENT proviene da GEVI.

vol. 13

04 May 2023

UPCOMING WIND POWER DEVELOPMENT

By Edoardo Simonelli, Eleonora Cacchio

According to the most recent GWEC estimates, 2023 will see the record for new wind capacity installed for the fourth year in a row reaching 100 GW globally. 

This is only the beginning of a global year-on-year growth rate (CAGR) of 13% that will hopefully result in 1.221 GW of new wind capacity over the next seven years, reaching the 2 TW threshold by 2030.

Onshore installations will naturally play a leading role in this global growth, but what are the effects of increased wind power capacity? 

Based on industry experience, a country that installs 1 GW of onshore wind power each year for five years will be able to power 5,9 million houses at the end of the fifth year, while saving as much as 34,6 million gallons of water per year that would have been otherwise used for thermoelectric generation. In addition, over the entire life cycle of wind farms, $19,3 billion in gross value added to the national economy and 414.000 jobs can be unlocked, as well as 290 million metric tons of CO2e saved.

In the case of the European Union, it would need to install 30 GW a year of new wind farms to meet its 2030 targets. This can only be achieved through an improvement of wind power supply chain on the continent with producer-friendly measures that include simplifying the permitting processes for wind farms, and accelerating access to funding for infrastructure investments to improve the cost-effectiveness of the prior steps to installation of new wind power capacity. 

These measures are a particular priority in the development of the energy potential of mini-wind power, which is estimated by ANEV to be 1.500 GWh per year on the Italian territory, that can be produced by about 850 MW of installed wind power capacity. 

L'articolo UPCOMING WIND POWER DEVELOPMENT proviene da GEVI.

vol. 12

13 April 2023

EUROPEAN WIND POWER INCENTIVE

By Edoardo Simonelli, Eleonora Cacchio

There are 255 GW of wind capacity installed in Europe that generated 487 TWh of electricity last year. More than 88% of wind power installations are onshore but this share is expected to decrease in favor of an increase in offshore wind energy to 25% of the 129 GW of new European wind farms planned by 2027.

The reasons for the lower incentive of large-scale offshore wind farms lie mainly in high input cost inflation, which is not sufficiently reflected in developers’ revenues, but also in the uninspiring market interventions by national governments that have undermined the confidence of most investors in this sector.

In 2022, Europe installed 19,2 GW of new wind power capacity with 16,7 GW of it onshore installed mainly in Germany, Sweden and Finland, while the United Kingdom built half of the offshore installations.

In Italy, wind capacity has been increased by 526 MW but only 30 MW are offshore installations. Overall 4.483 wind power plants are currently incentivised, with more than 85% of them having a capacity of under 200 kW.

Over here, incentives for wind power are monitored by the GSE (Gestore Servizi Energetici), which updates the “renewable sources charges meter” (FER) on a monthly basis. This tool makes it possible to measure the indicative annual cost of the incentives granted to plants powered by renewable sources, other than photovoltaic plants under “Conto Energia”, in accordance with current regulatory measures.

In March 2022, the indicative incentive cost of wind power was EUR 336,8 million which translated into over 16.012 GWh per year of incentivizable wind power. At the end of the last year, wind power generation reached 20.358 GWh, accounting for about 6,43% of national electricity consumption (316.827 GWh in 2022, Terna).

According to the FER counter, wind energy is the most highly incentivized (non-photovoltaic) renewable source in Italy since it accounts for about 41% of the total indicative annual incentive cost (EUR 817,4 million), and as many as 62% of the 7.225 plants incentivised so far are wind power plants.

L'articolo EUROPEAN WIND POWER INCENTIVE proviene da GEVI.

vol. 11

23 March 2023

INVESTING IN WIND ENERGY

By Edoardo Simonelli, Eleonora Cacchio

Today, wind power is the cheapest renewable resource available. Thanks to technological advancement and increased market competition there has been a 85% energy cost reduction over the past fifteen years. The cost of a kWh of electricity from on-shore wind power is getting as low as $0.04/KWh in Europe. At these rates, the price of wind power will soon be comparable to that of combined cycle natural gas facilities.

Nevertheless, the biggest limit to the spread of wind energy is undoubtedly its installation cost, which accounts for 70% of the total investment. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly difficult to install new wind farms, since the most profitable sites are already saturated.

The initial investment required by a 1 MW horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) averages between 1100 €/kW and 2000 €/kW. The initial investment cost increases up to 5000 €/kW in the case of small-scale wind power systems (< 100 kW) [1] due to the lower technology maturity and lower degree of competition within the market.

Note that the cost per installed kW grows inversely proportional to the installed power i.e. as the installed power increases, the unit cost per kW decreases, which is why the electricity produced by a 1 MW turbine is more than twice as cheap as a the one produced by a 10 kW micro turbine.

The good news is that even the latter micro systems are investments can pay for themselves in a rather short timeframe [2]: the average 25-year operational life of the wind turbine allows to amply amortize its initial costs, with the possibility of cutting down energy costs and reselling the surplus energy produced.

However, the productivity of the turbine is sensitive to the type of wind turbine, local wind conditions, and altitude of the installation. The latter of which is strongly correlated to the average wind speed and capacity factor. Statistically, large MW class wind turbines produce 2.2 MWh per year per kW, while mini-domestic wind power systems can produce up to 1.5 MWh per year per kW.

To balance out the variability of wind energy production, consumers often set up collective self-consumption groups and energy communities to produce, consume and share energy generated from different renewable sources.

[1] Small wind power systems are defined as one with a rated power up to 100 kW and a maximum diameter of 20 meters, while large wind power systems exceed 1000 kW in power and 50 meters in diameter.

[2] The payback period (PBP) can be calculated as the ratio of the initial investment to the difference between the revenues from selling the wind energy produced to third parties and the annual maintenance costs of the system.

L'articolo INVESTING IN WIND ENERGY proviene da GEVI.

vol. 10

8 March 2023

MEASURING WIND POWER POTENTIAL

By Edoardo Simonelli, Eleonora Cacchio

Global Wind Day is still far away, but we just can’t wait until 15th June to celebrate wind power and tell you about the potential of wind. 

First of all, what is wind? It is essentially kinetic energy produced by the movement of air from high-pressure to low-pressure zones, which is then converted via the use of wind turbines into mechanical and eventually electrical energy.

Wind power is among the oldest sources of energy, and was used as early as 3500 B.C. by the Egyptians to manoeuvre boats along the Nile. 

Wind speed is measured by means of an anemometer, from the Greek anemos (wind) and metron (measurement), which is an instrument that can detect changes in the physical properties of an air stream and quantify it in multiple scales of wind speed measurement (m/s, km/h, ft/min, MPH and knots). But wind speed is only one factor that determines the extractable power from the wind, the others being air density and swept air, which comes from the radius of the air turbine blades. 

The orographic conformation of the terrain must also not be underestimated since natural (e.g., hills) or man-made obstacles (such as buildings) in the terrain exert a frictional force on moving air masses causing the wind to thicken in the higher layers of the atmosphere. For this reason, in areas characterized by significant roughness such as mountainous areas, the average wind profile steeply increases with increasing altitude.

In general, to calculate wind productivity in a given geographical area, it is necessary to cross-reference the data of the frequency distribution of different wind speeds over a certain period (at least one year) with those of the power curve of a wind generator. 

Today, the world’s largest wind turbine is the Haliade-X, that is installed in the port area of Rotterdam (NL), 248×220 meters in size and capable of yielding 14 MW of maximum power which is enough to power up to 12’000 households.

But this record may soon be surpassed either by the German-Spanish SG 14-222 DD wind turbine installed in Thy National Park (Østerild locality, DK), which is estimated to be able to supply electricity to 18’000 households or by the Danish V236-15.0 MW wind turbine, which will be able to power up to at least 20’000 households thanks to its annual energy production of 80 GWh.

L'articolo MEASURING WIND POWER POTENTIAL proviene da GEVI.

vol. 9

22 February 2023

A QUICK INTRODUCTION TO THE WIND POWER MARKET

By Edoardo Simonelli, Eleonora Cacchio

From Scotsman James Blyth’s invention of the first wind turbine to produce electricity in 1887 to the present, wind power has become the second largest source of renewable energy production in the world providing about 21% of the worldwide electrical production as early as 2020 (IRENA), and it is still growing.

When we think of a wind turbine, the horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) immediately comes to our mind since it is the most widely used and originally developed type. But there are also vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs), such as GEVI’s, where the central axis of the rotor and the shaft that rotates the blades is vertical and perpendicular to the wind direction, instead of horizontal and parallel to it.

The first vertical axis wind turbine was patented in 1931 by French engineer Georges Jean Marie Darrieus and was shaped like a kitchen whisk, hence the name “eggbeater windmill“.

Then, to reduce the structural complexity of the Darrieus turbine and increase its efficiency, a wide variety of VAWTs were made in a multitude of shapes: V-shaped configuration, delta configuration, diamond configuration, giro mill configuration, and many others.

However, the main lift-type models of turbines are the egg-shaped Darrieus, the h-type with straight blades that looks like the letter H, and the double helix type with helical blades like a piece of DNA.

The second category of VAWTs is the drag-type, also called Savonius by the Finnish engineer Sigurd Savonius who patented it. It includes wind turbines with a shape like the letter S that are simpler structurally, but way less efficient in power generation than lift-type or so-called Darrieus ones. 

Whatever their shape,  wind turbines with a diameter smaller than 20 m and nominal power smaller than 100 kW can be classified as small wind turbines and they usually favor simpler regulation and easier installation procedures. 

In 2020, the global small wind power market was valued at $ 7.1 billion and was estimated to grow at a CAGR of 8.8% over the next decade, reaching $ 17.1 billion by 2030 (Allied Market Research). 

The recent growth of the small wind power segment, which includes a wide variety of wind turbines, from micro turbines to residential and mini turbines, is mainly due to the progressive saturation of onshore sites.

L'articolo A QUICK INTRODUCTION TO THE WIND POWER MARKET proviene da GEVI.