Repowering will be top of the agenda in at WindEnergy Hamburg from 24 to 27 September 2024.
By 2030, the EU wants to have 425GW of wind energy generation capacity in place, with two thirds contributed by onshore units.
To date, however, Europe has installed no more than 272GW (79% of which are onshore turbines).
So to achieve the 2030 goal, it will be necessary to install an average of 33GW every year.
Claus Ulrich Selbach, business unit director maritime and technology fairs & exhibitions at Hamburg Messe und Congress, said: “We can only reach this by maximising our expansion efforts.
“One key means to that end is repowering – replacing wind turbines that have reached the end of their lifespan with more powerful models.”
A joint EU directive facilitating wind energy projects has improved the conditions for the construction of additional high-output wind farms.
Norwegian wind energy company Statkraft which intends to modernise 35 older wind farms it has acquired in Germany.
Stefan-Jörg Göbel, Statkraft country manager in Germany, said: “A major portion of the energy transition on shore will be accomplished through repowering projects.”
A wind turbine erected 15 years ago typically has a capacity of 2MW to 3MW.
By comparison, the latest-generation turbines designed for onshore use have a capacity of 6MW to 7MW.
These state-of-the-art units are more powerful but also significantly larger than their predecessors.
Over the past 30 years, the hub height has tripled.
And while in 1980 a typical rotor had a diameter of 15 metres, this dimension is expected to increase to 250 metres by 2035.
At WindEnergy Hamburg, experienced logistics companies and heavy-lift specialists such as Eager.One, Liebherr, Schmidbauer and Gruber Logistics will showcase solutions for handling these oversized items safely, the organisers said.
But repowered wind turbines not only come with logistical challenges.
Their higher energy output also requires smart grid feed-in management as well as innovative, high-performance energy storage technologies.
For exhibitors addressing this field of expertise, WindEnergy Hamburg will lay out a dedicated Storage Tour at WindEnergy Hamburg.