The lessons learned from the development of the wind energy industry that might be applied to marine industry renewables

Abstract

This paper considers the early experiences of the development of wind turbines and the wind energy industry in order to try and identify lessons learned that could now be applied to the developing marine renewables technology and industry. It considers both political and commercial incentives and engineering development.

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“…Aviation was by this time a mature industry, with a wide body of knowledge in the field of aerodynamics. Proponents of the large-scale wind turbine test programmes believed that aerodynamic knowledge would be directly transferable to applications in wind energy, thus heavily influencing certain research programmes (Garrad, 2012;Heymann, 1998;Gipe, 1995).…”

“…In the UK, the Department of Energy support favoured this high-risk, commercially uncertain and highly expensive route of development (Price, 2006). This route was also the mainstay of early wind energy research programmes in the USA, Germany, Sweden, and, to an extent, Denmark (Garrad, 2012).…”

“…Ultimately, the early large-scale devices that dominated the research programmes failed to achieve significant impact on the initial development of a successful, and sustainable, wind energy industry (Garrad, 2012). Although there was transferable experience from other sectors, when put into practice this did not provide a workable solution.…”

“…Although it can be argued that technological learning did take place within the early largescale government led research projects, the products they were attempting to create did not have a market: the devices were too unreliable, too cumbersome, and too expensive for commercial interest (Jones and Bouamane, 2011). On the positive side, substantial data collection from large-scale government test projects would enable the formation of successful research facilities (such as Risø DTU National Laboratory in Denmark), and as a result would assist in the development of technical standards and device performance validation for the future wind energy sector (Garrad, 2012;Hendry et al, 2010); however, the emergence of a truly commercial wind industry came around from an altogether different route.…”

“…The early wind energy research, despite being correct in terms of the eventual multi-MW scale of wind turbines, wrongly assumed that technical aerospace expertise could deliver a rapid development of large scale wind energy converter technology (Garrad, 2012) A 'starting small' (kW-scale) approach was adopted by the agricultural manufacturing sector in Denmark during the formative stages of modern wind industry development, which allowed a productive commercial wind turbine market to evolve from grassroots beginnings (Heymann, 1998). This switch in approach in Denmark demonstrated that government support for a largeturbine research programme in tandem with favourable support mechanisms for the deployment of kW-scale devices at a community level allowed the formative development of both technology and a market (Klaassen et al, 2005).…”