Technology
Powering progress
As the demand for wind power grows, so too does the demand on the turbines producing it. This has resulted in bigger turbines and increasingly sprawling farms, but cost has become a signifi cant burden. One solution is to reduce the number of components and get more from less. Jonas Wahlström, head of product management, wind converters, at ABB, tells Andrew Tunnicliffe how medium-voltage converters could play a key role in addressing today’s challenges.
urope’s wind energy market is at a critical juncture. There’s no denying it has an important role to play in the energy mix and in the palpable need to meet the continent’s ambitious carbon reduction targets. Yet, as one November 2022 New York Times headline put it, ‘Europe’s Wind Industry Is Stumbling When It’s Needed Most’. You might expect such an assertion to be contested, and indeed it was. In fact, the figures add weight to any opposition such talk garnered. In 2022, the sector installed 15GW in new wind farms across the EU, one third more than 2021, according
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to Europe’s trade body, WindEurope. It also labels wind energy manufacturing as a “European success story”, supported by a large industrial ecosystem comprising 250 manufacturing facilities. However, even WindEurope has acknowledged the challenges faced by the industry in recent years. “A combination of inflation and unhelpful government interventions in electricity markets is undermining investments in new wind farms,” it acknowledged in a press release in January 2023, adding that 2022 had been a difficult year for the supply chain, with stubbornly high inflation hitting turbine manufacturers and suppliers hard. The
World Wind Technology /
www.worldwind-technology.com
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