Anti-wind activists have been barnstorming across the nation, making life tougher for wind builders. Nonetheless, they’ll’t cease the wind. Wind trade stakeholders have loads of alternatives to maintain the trade buzzing alongside, and that features repowering older wind farms with new generators.
Repowering An Outdated Wind Farm With Greater, Higher Generators…
In 2021, the Power Division took inventory of the wind farm repowering subject and famous that “repowering units the stage for future wind trade investments and helps maximize wind power use within the coming power transition.”
Repowering a wind farm typically entails retrofitting current turbine towers with new generators. CleanTechnica took observe of 1 such challenge again in 2019, when a developer introduced plans to replace a Nineteen Nineties-era wind farm in Wyoming with extra highly effective generators. The improve was aimed toward growing output by 60% general, whereas slashing the variety of generators right down to 13 from an authentic complete of 68. Fewer generators interprets into fewer towers and related tools to examine and keep, serving to to pare prices right down to the bone.
One other challenge of observe is the Winery Wind offshore wind farm in Massachusetts. The Trump administration tried to drag the plug on the challenge. Nevertheless, they solely precipitated a delay, throughout which the builders ditched the unique generators and took benefit of GE’s new, extra highly effective 13-megawatt Haliade-X offshore wind generators. With the brand new generators in hand, Winery Wind now sits at 62 generators, down from the unique plan of 84.
The Winery Wind challenge is at present chugging alongside at a very good clip, however they could wish to verify in with GE once more. The corporate bumped the Haliade-X as much as 14 megawatts some time again, and it’s laying plans to ship a 17-18 megawatt model later this yr.
…Or Simply Higher Generators
Upping the ante on wind farm capability is only one facet of the repowering subject. Changing older generators with new ones which might be roughly equal in capability additionally has its benefits. Wind generators have a lifespan of about 20 years. A brand new turbine retrofit may add one other 20 years to an current wind farm, with out the time and expense of preventing by the allowing course of from scratch.
“Repowered tasks can typically acquire additional cost-saving benefits, relative to new greenfield (or vacant-lot) developments, by utilizing current grid connections and infrastructure,” the Power Division additionally notes.
How About Some Steak With That Repowered Wind Farm?
With that in thoughts, let’s check out the US renewable power agency PivotGen, aka Pivot Energy Administration. Final yr the corporate attached with ACEN, a unit of the Phillipene conglomerate Ayala Corp., in a repowering enterprise involving eight current wind farms in Texas, all of that are named after steaks.
Sure, steaks.
ACEN issued a press launch on March 3 of this yr to announce that the deal is shifting ahead with an help from UPC Photo voltaic & Wind Investments, LLC.
There was no point out of steak within the press launch, although Patrice Clausse, CEO of ACEN Worldwide, advised that the partisan “anti-woke” political motion within the US is simply a lot scorching air.
“We’ve lengthy set our sights on the US as our subsequent market following our sustained success within the Asia Pacific,” Clausse mentioned. “We’re dedicated to enact the accelerated inexperienced power transition globally, and these new partnerships be certain that ACEN is well-placed to harness the huge alternatives within the US renewables area.”
CleanTechnica caught wind of the steak angle once we requested PivotGen for extra particulars in regards to the challenge. Although the improve is not going to improve the general capability of the eight tasks, it’ll be certain that the eight websites proceed to pump clear kilowatts into the grid, with out having to take care of the ballooning grid connection bottleneck that faces new tasks.
“… this deal is about making certain the prevailing machines are upgraded to make sure continued operations and add newer applied sciences to extend effectivity and manufacturing,” PivotGen advised CleanTechnica.
The eight tasks are topped by the 67.2-megawatt Porterhouse wind farm in Hansford County. The Filet and Tenderloin tasks in Sharman County weigh in at 10 megawatts every. Moore County is house to 4 different 10-megawatt wind farms, the Flat Iron, Brisket, Tri-Tip, and Ribeye. Rounding out the set is one other Moore County wind farm, the 8.75 megawatt T-Bone.
The tasty new names substitute the unique names of the wind farms, which had been considerably much less colourful, consisting solely of the letters “EW” adopted by a quantity from 4 to 11.
Should you’ve by no means heard of a Flat Iron steak earlier than, be part of the membership. It’s a comparatively new factor with a science background.
“The strategies to chop flat iron steaks had been developed by researchers on the College of Nebraska and the College of Florida. That’s how progressive this steak is,” clarify our pals over at Cattlemen’s Steakhouse within the Stockyards Metropolis a part of Oklahoma Metropolis.
“Earlier than that analysis, this reduce of meat couldn’t be constantly butchered due to the sinew that’s linked to it. Now that these lovely researchers have paved the way in which, the world is free to get pleasure from flat iron steak,” they add.
Woke Or Not, The Repowering Tsunami Is Coming
The full variety of steak-related megawatts within the Texas challenge is comparatively small, however as Patrice Clausse hints, that might be simply the tip of a really giant iceberg for ACEN, PivotGen, and UPC.
In the meantime, different corporations are pursuing repowering alternatives within the growing old fleet of US wind farms, and there may be a lot to select from. Final week, the worldwide wind consulting and communications agency Tamarindo assembled a report that got here up with the determine of $25 billion per yr in wind farm repowering alternatives within the US.
A few of these alternatives are usually not eye-catching by way of measurement, however they do illustrate how repowering tasks can work round neighborhood opposition. In Delaware, for instance, the Manchester Press studies that the Elk Wind Farm in Elk Township is getting a makeover from the agency Greenbacker Renewable Power. The wind farm entails 17 generators and 21 totally different landowners. Work is about to start this summer time and Greenbacker plans to improve the generators solely on properties the place the landowner is keen. If any determine not to participate, their generators nonetheless have some lifespan left and can stay in operation in the meanwhile.
As for the anti-wind motion, it has taken the type of a nationwide community that will or might not symbolize native sentiments. When the Delaware repowering challenge was first proposed again in 2020, for instance, a letter-to-editor appeared within the pages of the Dubuque, Iowa, Telegraph Herald, through which an Iowan exhorted different Iowans to be outraged on the “blatant company greed” exhibited by the developer.
“This ‘repowering’ will lead to over 900,000 kilos of turbine blades being dumped right into a landfill the place they are going to slowly leech their poisonous chemical compounds into the earth for the following 1,000 years,” the Iowan wrote of the Delaware challenge.
Truthful sufficient. Again in 2019 the Des Moines Register took observe of the excessive quantity of spent turbine blades heading for landfills from repowering tasks in Iowa.
Nevertheless, that was then. The main logistics agency Travero has dipped into the turbine blade recycling subject by its REGEN Fiber department, which has been piloting a new blade recycling course of at a facility in Des Moines. As described by REGEN, the power is absolutely mechanical and entails no course of warmth or chemical compounds.
On January 12 REGEN introduced that it’s constructing a commercial-scale recycling manufacturing unit subsequent to the Travero Logistics Park Cedar Rapids, close to the Jap Iowa Airport in Fairfax. They count on to be open for enterprise within the second half of 2023.
At full operation, the power will produce greater than 30,000 tons of shredded blade supplies yearly, to be re-used primarily in functions involving asphalt and concrete.
Picture: One in all eight Texas wind farms to be repowered by the US agency PivotGen (picture courtesy of PivotGen by way of e mail).
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