Wind power plant construction kit

 

Depending on the size of the company, the number of turbines produced per year for a manufacturer of wind power plants (WTG) is between approximately 50 and a maximum of 2,000, which corresponds to small or very small series by industrial standards.

The demands on the individualisation of the WTG are extremely high. These depend on legal and political framework conditions (e.g. normative grid requirements, safety and labelling requirements, grid connection conditions) as well as on customer- and market-dependent wishes and requirements (maximum transport dimensions, climatic conditions, grid frequency and voltage, noise requirements). Almost every project ultimately requires a more or less individually assembled WTG for the optimal economic utilization of the given framework conditions, so that a high degree of flexibility in their products is absolutely necessary for the WTG manufacturers.

The requirements placed on the product portfolios of wind turbine manufacturers worldwide depend to a large extent on the respective, especially political, framework conditions, for example with regard to the expansion of the power grids, the economic promotion of wind energy, the expansion targets awarded in each case, and the grid requirements. These conditions are developing rapidly and dynamically, often depending on political majorities and economic influences. This results in additional requirements for manufacturers to adapt their products to changing conditions quickly, flexibly and with little effort.

In order to react as effectively as possible to this dynamic environment and at the same time be able to offer competitive products, wind turbine manufacturers must develop new strategies that enable them to make their product portfolios as flexible as possible while at the same time reducing their electricity production costs (Levelized Cost of Energy, LCoE). In order to meet these conflicting goals between faster and more flexible individualisation of products with shorter product life cycles and high cost and efficiency pressure in the best possible way, a modular product kit for WTGs is to be developed in this project. This should enable a fast and low-cost adaptation of new products to the changing framework conditions and requirements, while at the same time using modules, components and parts of the same construction between different products of the product portfolio.

This project is to serve to serve the requirements to the product portfolio by means of a modular product construction kit still to be defined, in order to reduce firstly the complexity of the product portfolio, secondly to increase the flexibility of the adaptations of the products necessary on the market side, thirdly to reduce the expenditure for necessary product adaptations and fourthly thus to reduce the "time-to-market" for new product variants.