The Global Wind Turbine Market 2010: Energy From Thin Air
Wind energy, along with solar energy, has become one of the most popular linchpins of the environmental movement. With zero cost for raw fuel and impact on the environment primarily limited to aesthetics, power generation by harnessing the wind is expected to grow at a staggering pace over the coming years. Unlike other energy sources and methodologies like oil, coal and hydroelectric, the means of capturing the freely available wind energy is relatively simple and uncomplicated. It needs few variations because the source itself is consistent everywhere that it is utilized. The basic technology used is wind turbines.
Global energy consumption is projected to increase by 44 percent from 2006 to 2030. The most prevalent competing energy sources for this giant economic pie each have their own drawbacks. Oil reserves are beginning to disappear. Nuclear energy has safety and citizenry concerns. Coal, while having abundant reserves, carries environmental consequences despite recent efforts at finding solutions. Of the more
environmentally friendly energy technologies, geothermal is currently limited geographically. Solar power is still at least double the cost of any other technology. Wind power began satisfying the need for safe, abundant energy.
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into electricity using wind turbines. Although wind currently produces only about 1% of worldwide electricity use, it is growing rapidly, increasing more than fivefold globally between 2000 and 2007. Several countries have achieved relatively high levels of penetration. Wind energy accounted for approximately 19% of electricity production in Denmark, 9% in Spain and Portugal, and 6% in Germany and Ireland during the year 2007.
Wind power has many advantages over other forms of electrical power generation:
- The energy source is abundant wherever the wind blows with sufficient, sustained speed
- The fuel source requires research, but no exploration, mining, transportation, purification or conversion
- The energy is renewable
- The “fuel” cost is zero
A few drawbacks include the need for a means to store power when the wind is not blowing; the need for arrays of equipment to capture the energy; and that economies of scale are just beginning to appear within the technology.
Wind energy generation has taken firm hold in the past decade and is currently growing at the fastest pace of any power technology in the United States. Over the period 2004 to 2009, overall electrical generation had a 5-year growth rate of 4.5%. In the same period, wind power more than tripled the closest competing technology by growing at a rate of 79%. During the same period, wind cost per kilowatt-hour of energy generated was reduced to the same level as more mainstream energy technologies.
However, two difficulties limit even greater advances in the technology. The first is the inability, in most locations, to provide baseload electricity. Even in the most windy locations, the source of energy can be variable just like sunlight is not always available to solar arrays. In both of those cases, further advances
in the technology will be facilitated by improvements in the ability to store energy for later use. The second major difficulty which must be addressed is the physical presence of a population of bladed vanes atop large towers. The most cost- effective place to situate wind farms is near the people and businesses which require the energy. But the near presence of the towers themselves is disagreeable to society. An alternative being used is to place the towers in offshore waters, away from people, yet this increases the costs of installation, maintenance and power transmission.
The prime mover behind this whole energy technology is the simple wind turbine. This modern iteration of the traditional windmill has been adapted with today’s knowledge of aerodynamics and engineering to create an energy-efficient power generator. The refinement of the technology over the past two decades has contributed to the expansion of its use for power generation.
The wind turbine market in the United States alone is expected to jump from $8 billion in 2007 to over $45 billion in 2014. The top ten states in U.S. spending are, in order, Texas, California, Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, New York, Kansas and Illinois. U.S. President Obama has set a goal of investing $15 billion per year, over the next ten years, in renewable energy and alternative fuels. Increased use of wind power was specifically mentioned as a goal. The effects of the natural growth of the industry along with government focus and incentives promises a virtual explosion of opportunities in the wind turbine and energy markets.