Bigger, better blades to help repower wind opportunities
Brookfield Renewable plans to install new equipment, software for farms
The declining costs of solar energy often grab headline news, but wind turbines across North America also are set for major growth.
In recent months, Toronto-based Brookfield Renewable Partners LP has touted “repowering” plans: essentially upgrading existing wind farms, often by installing new larger blades and rotors and sometimes new software.
Connor Teskey, chief executive of Brookfield Renewable, said that in the United States existing tax policy, which offers companies credit for clean electricity generated, creates a strong financial incentive to repower. Brookfield, for instance, is investing $600 million in its 845-megawatt Shephards Flat wind project in Oregon to replace the 100-metre rotors with 127-metre rotors and new blades.
By the end of 2022, about 320 turbines in the project are expected to be repowered. But he noted that extending the radius of a blade has an exponential effect on the surface area.
“The blades are just getting bigger, capturing more energy,” Teskey told the Financial Post, explaining that new lighter, stiffer and longer blades also require less wind to rotate.
In the next five years, Teskey has estimated that 200 gigawatts of wind turbine capacity around the world will be 15 years or older, and thus a candidate for “repowering.” The upgrades could gain further traction, amid lower than expected wind levels in Europe this season, which has been blamed as a contributing factor to the continent's energy crisis.
In February, Brookfield announced its Us$700-million purchase of Shepards Flat, with Teskey citing the repowering opportunity and a U.S. tax credit that applies to each kilowatt of per hour clean electricity generated.
The company expects the repowering project will generate more than $45 million in tax credits annually, in addition to the money it receives from selling the energy.
He said repowering can increase a wind projects' generation by 25 to 40 per cent, and cost 30 to 50 per cent of a new build. Plus, most of the infrastructure is already in place — land, permits, connections to the grid — so the timeline to development and construction moves quickly, Teskey said.
“The joy of repowering is you often only need to replace the blades or some other components,” he said. “And you can get a significant increase in generation.”
The opportunity has excited some analysts. Frederic Bastien, of Raymond James, called Shephards Flat “the tip of the repowering iceberg” in a note this past August.
“We fully expect (Brookfield Renewable) to flex its muscles to underwrite scale opportunities that deliver attractive returns for its investors,” Bastien wrote.
The amount of new wind turbine capacity added in 2020 grew by 90 per cent compared to 2019, outpacing the rate of solar power additions in 2020, where growth increased by 23.3 per cent year over year, according to the International Energy Agency.
Teskey has said that both solar and wind power are expected to grow at blistering paces, especially as many corporations look to decarbonize their energy supply to work toward net zero emissions commitments. Globally, new investments in renewable energy in the first six months of the year stood at US$174.1 billion — a record for a first half, according to the Bloombergnef.
Solar has advantages in that it can be set up and installed essentially by a worker with a screwdriver and a ladder, he said, adding it all just snaps together.
By contrast, as wind turbines reach increasingly staggering heights, the blades and parts often need to be delivered by special vehicles at odd hours, when the highway can be shut down. The height also constrains how many workers can operate at the same time.
Brandy Giannetta, vice-president of policy, regulatory and government affairs for the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, estimated that solar power costs had dropped 90 per cent over the past decade while wind had dropped 70 per cent.
Within Canada, there are currently 14,000 megawatts of installed wind capacity, with about 35 per cent of that installed in Ontario, according to Giannetta.
By contrast, there were about 2,891 megawatts of installed solar capacity in Canada at the end of 2020, according to CANREA.
Giannetta said most of Canada's wind assets have not yet reached a stage of operation where it makes sense to repower. Rather, she said, Alberta and Saskatchewan, as well as Nova Scotia and Quebec, are still adding new onshore and offshore wind capacity and plenty more will be needed as the country moves to decarbonize its grid.
“In Canada, we have a significant amount of untapped potential,” said Giannetta. “Demand growth is expected to increase because of the decarbonization of the broader economy and it's not like we don't have room to add more.”
The joy of repowering is you often only need to replace the blades ... you can get a significant increase in generation.”