The Institutional Investor Guide to Modern Energy - (Page 6) The Institutional Investor Guide to Modern Energy The Technology f there was a Eureka moment in turbine design, it probably came in the late 1990s when – after nearly 20 years of innovation – wind-generated electricity began drifting toward a price of $0.08 per kilowatt-hour. Nearly a decade on, turbine capacities have leveled off in the 1.5 to 3.0 MW range, with longer series production enabling a renewed focus on quality standards and increased reliability. Modern wind technology has proved its durability – maintaining a 20-plus year life span in low and high wind speeds, and in extreme desert heat and arctic cold. Ongoing innovations include the use of composite materials in manufacturing lighter and more aerodynamic blades, variations in the drive train systems to reduce loads, and improved control systems that maximize grid network compatibility. A single turbine can include up to 9,000 parts. According to Troy Patton, senior vice president for R&D at Vestas, the approach is one of bundling technology into a power plant solution that deals with everything from turbine design and site placement, to diagnostics monitoring and grid integration. There are many ways to improve the technology, he says, which could make turbines even more efficient, more reliable and more powerful. Many of these solutions cannot be designed into the supply chain due to cost. But they’re out there, insists Patton, a former member of the U.S. Navy who was headhunted out of GE and joined Vestas in 2006, a year after CEO Ditlev Engel’s arrival. Patton takes enormous pride in his team’s geographical and expert diversity, believing the broad range of experience will give Vestas the innovative edge the company needs in order to stay ahead. “We have materials engineers who try to figure out what the best gluing compound and epoxy resin times are sitting next to the guy who,” laughs Patton, “knows what kind of Reynolds number we need to test in the wind tunnel to get better aerodynamics efficiency on the blade. You don’t get too many businesses where there’s that kind of mix,” he says. I Racheting Up the Efficiency Site-Specific Challenges Where Vestas still has a ways to go, says Patton, is in aerodynamics. “It’s that understanding of these wind and site conditions where you put a turbine on the mountain, or you put it in the ocean, or the desert, and the fact is the wind is different in each of these locations. Truly understanding that is something we’re just starting to explore.” From atop a turbine’s nacelle unit anywhere out in the field, Patton and his team can access 136 transmission signals beamed in continuously to a diagnostics center housed in a discreet corner at the R&D headquarters in Aarhus. The information gives Vestas technicians the ability to anticipate service issues, but it also provides roughly 60 terra bytes of data for working out problems on rotor design and tower construction. Patton also has access to some of the world’s most advanced meteorological data thanks to Line Gulstad, a mesoscale engineer who creates wind maps scaled down to specified turbine locations. “When people [in the company] hear about what we are capable of, they get good ideas of how to apply the knowledge we have, so we are not alone,” says Gulstad’s boss, Lars Christian Christensen, who manages the site competency center’s R&D team. But perhaps the best example of a group think solution lies at the transmission level, where “smart turbines” today have a number of built in voltage support features that enable them to more smoothly integrate their power into the electricity grid. Called “low voltage ride-through,” this technology enables turbines to stay connected to the grid during frequency spikes. It operates inside the turbine’s digital signal processor and also at the wind farm level where transformers and capacity banks provide additional adjustments to the power flow. Vestas says it is the only wind turbine manufacturer to have an in-house test stand facility, which allows it to know with greater certainty whether its turbines have met the local grid specifications. Transmission Lines Limit Growth Wind energy’s transmission variability is a controversial and often misunderstood area which arouses considerable debate within the industry. Grid operators often encounter variability in electricity supply and demand – whether from millions of consumers turning appliances on and off, or from the sudden failure of a conventional power plant. “It’s not isolated to wind,” says Greg Fishman, of the California ISO, the state-created authority which manages California’s electricity grid. “But there is and will likely always be a need to balance wind’s intermittent nature with energy storage devices, demand side management and other forms of generation that can be ramped up and down to match the variances in wind production.” But wind energy advocates say the grid has inherent flexibility This Special Report was prepared by the Special Projects Department of Institutional Investor. Annual Installed Capacity by Region 2003-2008 9,000 8,000 7,000 6,000 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 MW ■ 2003 ■ 2004 ■ 2005 ■ 2006 ■ 2007 ■ 2008 Europe Source: Global Wind Energy Council North America Asia 6 • Institutional Investor Guide to Modern Energy • March 2009
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