SAMPE Journal - May/June 2021 - 28

FEATURE / AIRBORNE WIND ENERGY SYSTEM
costs for each. The bottom-up method requires
in-depth knowledge of the product and all of the
steps in manufacturing. The development of
this kind of model requires significant time and
effort; the advantages, however, include a very
detailed estimate and breakdown of the major
costs for the product. A review of the literature
for bottom-up cost modelling revealed a number
of studies of wind turbine blade manufacture on
a scale relevant to a multi-megawatt AWES wing.
Schubel produced a series of cost analyses of
manufacturing processes for large (>40 m) wind
turbine blades. Schubel investigated automated
manufacturing processes7, cost savings for resin
infusion production8 and the impact of different
variables on the cost modelling approach9. The
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in
the US have produced studies and reports on cost
modelling of their reference wind turbine blade
designs. Developing in-house tools for bottom-up
analysis, Griffith et al.10 have studied the breakdown
of costs for materials, equipment and labour for
40-100 m long wind turbine blades11. Subsequent
studies of NREL reference blades include design
and manufacturing studies of 61.5 m blades
using traditional FRP-epoxy and thermoplastic
production processes12,13.
Summary
This work presents a newly developed cost model
that will be used to guide the choice of production
method for a low-cost and high-performance AWES.
The section on Cost Model Description provides an

overview of the cost model and a description of
the modules for analyzing the material, labour and
equipment costs. That section on Cost also includes
the input data for a concept multi-megawatt AWES
wing and for two production methods: vacuum bag
only (VBO) out-of-autoclave prepregs and resin
infusion using LRTM. The results and discussion of
the cost breakdown for the wing for the production
methods are discussed within topics on Production
Methods and Materials. Finally, the Conclusions
section includes both the conclusions on the
current research and objectives for future work.
METHODOLOGY
Cost Model Description
Cost Model Overview
The framework for the cost model is shown in
Figure 2 (a), taking inspiration from Weustink et
al.14. The wing is broken down into categories for
spar caps, webs and skins, with models generated
for the individual parts, e.g. the fore and aft shear
webs or the spar caps on the high-pressure and
low-pressure sides of the wing.
The functions described in Figure 3 are used
to determine the cost of materials, labour and
equipment for each part. Summing the totals for
each level in the framework produces the overall
cost for wing manufacture. Six input databases are
required by the model:

Figure 2. (a) The modular approach for the cost model provides flexibility in the number of parts/sub-assemblies contained in the
wing, (b) the general production flowchart from material preparation to wing assembly.
(a)

(b)

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SAMPE Journal - May/June 2021

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