Examining the trends of 35 years growth of key wind turbine components

Abstract The wind industry has innovated constantly throughout the past decades. Nevertheless, few studies have adequately analyzed the trends and consequences of the ever-growing wind turbines. Understanding the development and relationship of the technical characteristics of wind turbines provides insight into future innovations for multi-megawatt wind turbines. Such knowledge can be useful for industry members or researchers who are determined to design anything from new energy plans to the next wind turbine component. This study draws on an extensive dataset consisting of 35 years of multi-megawatt wind turbine inventions to explain the recent decades' development, which has resulted in a doubling of tower height and rotor diameters as well as eight times greater nameplate capacities. In addition, this study predicts and discusses the future development of wind turbines. The prediction reveals that both onshore and offshore wind turbines will keep growing in size, although offshore wind turbines are forecasted to experience the greatest growth.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Energy for Sustainable Development

• Publication date

  2019-06-01

• Fields of study

  Engineering, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/J.ESD.2019.02.003
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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