JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #90 - June/July 2014 - 24

SWT

* Pastures, farms and remote villages
* Potable water systems for leisure
* Pumping
* Desalination and purification
* Remote monitoring
* Research and education
* Telecom base stations

SWT orientation by manufacturers by 2011

World market forecast 2020
The increasing demand for clean and
affordable energy all over the world will
without doubt foster the demand for small
wind turbines. In developing countries in
particular, small wind turbines can easily and
rapidly contribute to electrifying millions
of people in rural areas. Governments and
international organisations such as IRENA

have started to understand this potential
and are now more and more including small
wind turbines in their renewable energy programmes. Several industrialised countries
also have ambitious targets and corresponding policies in place. In general, political
support can be expected to further increase
the installed capacity in the upcoming years.
Increasing fossil fuel prices, global warming
and the ever-growing electricity demand will
continue to be the three long-term drivers of
the small wind industry. For the small wind
technology to mature, however, the industry
needs to be driven by supportive policies
and standards.
The forecast below is based on opinions
of industry experts, the growth pattern of
the large wind turbine industry, and the
historical growth trend of the solar photovoltaics (PV) renewable industry for the
past decade, that shares many characteristics
with the small wind industry. Accordingly,
the small wind industry can be expected to
follow similar growth patterns as the large
wind and solar industry until 2020.
A recent trend of the small wind industry
has shown a 19-35% annual increase in
new installed capacity for the past years.
This growth rate is anticipated to continue
until 2015, reaching an annual installation

of 190 MW of small wind turbines. Within
this time frame, individual countries and
the international small wind community
will be able to establish more rigorous and
structured standards and policies to regulate
the market and support investments. Based
on a conservative assumption, the market
could subsequently see a steady compound
growth rate of 20% from 2015 to 2020.
The industry is forecasted to reach approximately 480 MW of newly installed capacity
added annually in 2020 and to achieve a
cumulative installed capacity of close to 3
GW by 2020.

Definition of small wind turbines
There is still no globally unified definition
of small wind turbines. Originally, they were
defined by their ability to produce small
amounts of electricity for house appliances
or to cover various household-based electricity demands. However, this definition
does not make sense on a universal level
as energy consumption patterns are very
different in the different parts of the world:
while an American family would need a 10
kW turbine to cover its full consumption,
a European household demands a 4 kW
turbine and an average Chinese household
requires as small as a 1 kW turbine.
Technically, there are several definitions of
small wind turbines. The most important
international standardisation body, the IEC,
defines SWTs in standard IEC 61400-2 as
having a rotor swept area of less than 200
m², equating to a rated power of approximately 50 kW generated at a voltage below
1,000 V AC or 1,500 V DC. In addition to
this standard, several countries have set up
their own definition. The discrepancy of the
upper capacity limit of small wind turbines
ranges between 15 kW to 100 kW for the
five largest countries. The major pattern of
today's upper limit capacity leans towards
100 kW.
The Small Wind World Report 2014 is
published by the World Wind Energy Association. The authors are Stefan Gsänger and
Jean Pitteloud. This report was presented in
March 2014. n

SWT Installed Capacity World Market Forecast 2009 - 2020

24 jec composites magazine / No90 June - July 2014

More information:
www.wwindea.org
http://www.wwindea.org
JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #90 - June/July 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #90 - June/July 2014
