Nordex wins key approval for 179-metre concrete and steel hybrid wind turbine tower
Nordex wins key approval for 179-metre concrete and steel hybrid wind turbine tower | Windpower Monthly
Nordex has secured technical approval for a 179-metre steel and concrete wind turbine tower it plans to install in Germany later this year.
Certification body TÜV SÜD awarded Nordex DIBt (Deutsches Institut für Bautechnik) type approval for the concept at the WindEurope 2024 conference in Bilbao last week.
The towers feature convex concrete segments up to 20 metres long, which are assembled and braced at the wind farm. The upper steel sections are later placed on top along with the nacelle and blades.
A Nordex spokesman told Windpower Monthly that using concrete for the lower sections of towers had logistical benefits because concrete tower keystones with smaller diameters can be transported more easily than larger steel counterparts. And all-steel tower hub heights are limited compared to concrete-steel hybrids, Nordex claimed.
Nordex installed its first self-developed hybrid tower– with a hub height of 168 metres – in Finland last year. It plans to install the larger 179-metre variant at a commercial wind farm in Germany in the third quarter of this year.
Karsten Brüggemann, vice president of the central region at Nordex, said that Germany is one of the target markets for the 179-metre hybrid tower, and added: “This high hybrid tower makes it possible to considerably increase energy production especially at low-wind sites far away from the coast.”
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.