Author: Francesco Miceli
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Wind farm testing and commissioning
This is a short (and incomplete) summary of the main test which are usually performed in a wind farm. Test can be divided in 3 categories: factory tests, site tests and performance tests. Some test are performed before the start of the construction works, others during construction and commissioning and others when the wind farm…
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Wind turbines manufacturers business model
Today I’ve been asked by a reader about the business model of wind turbines manufacturers (also called OEM, Original Equipment Manufacturer). As I think it’s interesting question, I decided to write a post about it. In a nutshell, wind turbine manufacturers are selling a product. This product is assembled pretty much like a car –…
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Going Glocal: how to create local content
It is not unusual for public tenders in the renewable energy industry to request for a certain percentage on “local content requirements” (LCR). This requirements exist (and are usually very demanding) in the majority of countries in South America (Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina) and in several other emerging countries (Morocco, Russia, etc.). The required percentage can…
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Type of towers – stiff, soft or soft soft?
In the last month I spent a lot of time discussing about “soft soft” towers. But what does it exactly means? Steel tower for wind turbine are classified as stiff, soft, or soft soft based on the relative natural frequencies of tower, rotor and blades. You obviously want to avoid that your tower is excited…
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Sell a service, not a product: the Indian way to wind energy
India is becoming a very big market for wind energy. After the decline of many European markets (Spain in primis) India is now fighting with Germany to be the third bigger nation in terms of yearly installed megawatts (somewhere around 3600 MW). You can see the other in the graphic above, that I’ve stolen from…
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Top 5 owners of wind turbines
Ever asked yourself who is buying wind turbines? There are quite a lot of customers profiles – from tiny companies (or even a couple of farmers joining their strengths and lands in a renewable energy project) to professional developers, factories interested in using the energy produced all the way up in the ladder to the…
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Most beautiful wind farm picture in 2017
The picture above is the winning entry for the Global Wind Day photo contest. It’s a wind farm in Greece (Agios Georgios, 73 MW: 9x V90-3.0 MW and 14x V112-3). Even if it’s not an EPC I had the pleasure of having a look at the project several years ago and yes, the topography was…
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Wind turbine towers – the bigger the better
It looks like the trend in the business is to go as high as possible. The places with the best wind conditions have been already used in the first 20 something years of the wind industry. Now it’s time to work with low wind sites – and probably, repower the older wind farms. I consider…
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Acronyms in wind farms construction
I’ve been informed by one of my most affectionate reader that some acronyms that I’m using in the blog are not immediately clear. Therefore I’ve started a first list of the most used ones – special thanks to Janos for helping expanding the list: AEP Annual energy production. BoP Balance of plant. All civil (roads,…
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Chinese wind turbines – are they coming?
Well, apparently the answer to this question is “not yet”. I’ve been through an interesting article from Bloomberg – the images of this post are taken from the same source. As you can see, in addition to a new reshuffle in the top 3 (Vestas up again, together with GE), there is another important piece…