At the ‘End-of-Life Issues & Strategies’ (EoLIS 2024) seminar, which began on Wednesday 4 December in Gothenburg, the European wind energy association WindEurope warned that not enough is being done to replace older turbines with modern models, as more and more wind turbines across Europe reach the end of their operational lives.
‘Repowering’ turbines could triple the output of a wind farm while using 25% fewer turbines and quadrupling the output per turbine - thanks in particular to advances such as longer rotor blades, “which increase the overall swept area of the turbine”.
Germany leads the way, with more than half of all repowering projects in the EU, but countries such as France and Spain face obstacles such as restrictive regulations and the difficulty repowered wind farms face in obtaining grid connections.
Meanwhile, recycling challenges persist for turbine blades, with annual blade waste expected to exceed 100,000 tonnes by 2040. (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)