Titel: Summary of The Small Wind World Report 2012
Författare: Peter Zhang
Utgivare: World Wind Energy Association
Årtal: 2012
Ämnesord: småskalig vindkraft
Sökord: small wind turbine, SWT, off-grid, smart grid
Rapport (Pdf)
Sammanfattning: In order to secure energy supply and cope with climate change, GHG emission reduction,biodiversity protection, renewable technologies development, energy conservation, and efficiency improvements have become the world’s growing consensus. Among all renewables, wind energy proves to be a relatively matured technology and has tremendous potential in commercialisation and mass production. Today the major application of wind power is electricity generation from large grid-connected wind farms. Until the end of 2011, the total global installed wind capacity reached 239 GW, with an output accounting for 3 % of the total generation capacity in the world.
However, in many countries, especially developing countries, off-grid small wind power is an efficient and key solution to solve problems of power supply in remote regions of electricity shortage. With the expansion of power grid and the reduction of electricity scarce areas, small-scale wind has now been applied in fields such as city road lighting, mobile communication base stations, offshore aquaculture and sea water desalination in several countries. Nonetheless, the industrial scale still remains much smaller compared to that of large-scale wind power and great potential awaits to be exploited.
Following the shift of the energy sector from a centralised energy grid to an ideal distributed network, small wind systems and its hybrid applications are playing an increasingly important role. With the support of the smart grid technology, small wind turbines (SWTs) can now be connected to the power grid from the consumer end and contribute to the stabilisation of the power grid. Small wind application and hybrid technologies have already been put into practice in many countries with good market prospects. Although the unit capacity of SWTs are far less than that of the large turbines, it is just as important for the industry to strengthen its research & development, improve product quality, establish rigorous standards, testing and certification, and lobby for supportive policies to guarantee the long-term growth of the market.
The Small Wind World Report 2012 published by the WWEA provides a comprehensive analysis on the global small wind market based on first hand data.