Special report
species makes it home in an area that could be negatively affected by wind turbines.
“Perhaps we need to have a preliminary screening rather than the full screening that is being carried out now,” Komusanac suggests. “And obviously assessors need to take into account the fact that species may have migrated, and that in some cases will be helpful.”
Repowering can present further challenges when it comes to environmental impact – for example, taller turbines pose a greater risk of interfering with set migration routes for birds of all kinds. Many countries have strict prohibitions on turbine height in certain areas – such as near rivers, which many migration paths tend to follow.
The good news is that repowering projects tend to have fewer turbines, a quarter less on average than older wind farms. “This will definitely help, not only from an environmental point of view but also from a public acceptance perspective,” Komusanac notes.
Inspection engineers preparing to rappel down a rotor blade of a wind turbine.
“We’re basically going all around Europe trying to look at different permitting regimes and taking lessons from them,” Komusanac says. The organisation also has high hopes for the permitting guidelines set to be released by the European Commission in the spring of 2022.
Processes to streamline
Areas that Komusanac says could be streamlined include the process of ascertaining the impact a repowered wind farm will have on the grid. “We have machines that are performing much better, that have better capabilities than the previous ones. There should definitely be a fast check. This would cut one corner,” he notes.
The spatial planning process could also be significantly accelerated. At present, in many cases, operators must wait for 30 days just for a first reply. “This could be much simpler, perhaps in a digital format with tick boxes,” Komusanac suggests. But the biggest hurdle is without a doubt the environmental impact assessment. For greenfield projects, it takes two years in certain countries just to monitor the different species in the area. But even with repowering projects, there can be issues if endangered animals move to the location of the wind farm since it started operating. “At one wind farm in Germany, [a rare species of bird] migrated and found sanctuary there. But you cannot build a wind farm next to an endangered species, even [if] that species has moved there and lived in harmony with the wind farm for several years,” Komusanac explains. For many early onshore wind power projects, environmental and nature mapping, and motoring of proposed sites, were in their nascency – meaning that the presence of endangered species could easily have been missed at the time. In many countries, repowering permits cannot be granted if a protected
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Accelerate repowering Once a project has been permitted, it’s time to think about financing again. Do you go for a subsidies scheme or an auction or do you sign a PPA? Then commissioning starts. “At the same time as you’re preparing to decommission the old project, you have to plan how it will be recommissioned,” Komusanac notes.
“It takes time to disassemble everything, transfer it off the ground and, depending on the national regulations, figure out what to do with the foundation and how deep you have to go to remove it. The concrete that is removed can sometimes be used for the new wind farm, so it’s wise to plan the period of commissioning at the same time as decommissioning, so that in a year or two both processes can be carried out.” In 2021, 396MW of wind power was decommissioned in Europe – 233MW in Germany, 103MW in Austria, 26MW in Denmark, 23MW in Belgium, 8MW in France, 3MW in the UK and finally just 0.2MW in Switzerland. These numbers are only set to increase in the coming years. And while repowering is becoming a more widespread practice – with 515MW of repowered capacity being commissioned in the same year, as mentioned earlier – Komusanac considers this mere baby steps compared with what needs to be done. WindEurope’s priority over the coming years is to accelerate this process, he makes clear. “In the next ten years, we expect repowering will increase to around 2GW per year, with Germany and Spain the two dominant markets, followed by France, Italy and Portugal,” Komusanac predicts. With substantial work to be done in order to reach that goal, it’ll be a busy decade – but if Europe is to hit its EU energy targets by 2030, it’s vital that the work gets done. ●
World Wind Technology /
www.worldwind-technology.com
Jacques Tarnero/
Shutterstock.com
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