Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Effects of turbine technology and land use on wind power resource potential

Nature Energy volume 3, pages 494–500 (2018)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Estimates of wind power potential are relevant for decision-making in energy policy and business. Such estimates are affected by several uncertain assumptions, most significantly related to wind turbine technology and land use. Here, we calculate the technical and economic onshore wind power potentials with the aim to evaluate the impact of such assumptions using the case-study area of Finland as an example. We show that the assumptions regarding turbine technology and land use policy are highly significant for the potential estimate. Modern turbines with lower specific ratings and greater hub heights improve the wind power potential considerably, even though it was assumed that the larger rotors decrease the installation density and increase the turbine investment costs. New technology also decreases the impact of strict land use policies. Uncertainty in estimating the cost of wind power technology limits the accuracy of assessing economic wind power potential.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Histogram of specific investment costs.
Fig. 2: Economic wind power potential and marginal cost uncertainty.
Fig. 3: Impact of the maximum hub height on the economic wind power potential.
Fig. 4: Parametric sensitivity of the wind power potential.

References

  1. Hoogwijk, M., de Vries, B. & Turkenburg, W. Assessment of the global and regional geographical, technical and economic potential of onshore wind energy. Energy Econ. 26, 889–919 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Chabot, B. Wind Power Silent Revolution: New Wind Turbines for Light Wind Sites (Renewables International, 2013).

  3. Ender, C. & Neddermann, B. Wind energy use in Germany. DEWI Mag. 47, 62–66 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Wiser, R. & Bolinger, M. 2015 Wind Technologies Market Report. Technical Report (US Department of Energy, Washington, 2016).

  5. McKenna, R., Ostman v.d. Leye, P. & Fichtner, W. Key challenges and prospects for large wind turbines. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 53, 1212–1221 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Malcolm, D. J. & Cotrell, J. The influence of specific rating on the cost of wind energy in Collection of ASME Wind Energy Symposium Technical Papers AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit AIAA 2004-1006 (AIAA, Reston, VA, 2004).

  7. Hirth, L. & Müller, S. System-friendly wind power. How advanced wind turbine design can increase the economic value of electricity generated through wind power. Energy Econ. 56, 51–63 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Europe’s Onshore and Offshore Wind Energy Potential—An Assessment of Environmental and Economic Constraints Technical Report 6/2009 (European Environment Agency, 2009).

  9. Fueyo, N., Sanz, Y., Rodrigues, M., Montañés, C. & Dopazo, C. High resolution modelling of the on-shore technical wind energy potential in Spain. Wind Energy 13, 717–726 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Zhou, Y., Luckow, P., Smith, S. J. & Clarke, L. Evaluation of global onshore wind energy potential and generation costs. Environ. Sci. Technol. 46, 7857–7864 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Mentis, D., Hermann, S., Howells, M., Welsch, M. & Siyal, S. H. Assessing the technical wind energy potential in Africa—a GIS-based approach. Renew. Energy 83, 110–125 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Mentis, D., Siyal, S. H., Korkovelos, A. & Howells, M. A geospatial assessment of the techno-economic wind power potential in India using geographical restrictions. Renew. Energy 97, 77–88 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Lu, X., McElroy, M. B. & Kiviluoma, J. Global potential for wind-generated electricity. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 106, 10933–10938 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. McKenna, R., Hollnaicher, S., Ostman v.d. Leye, P. & Fichtner, W. Cost-potentials for large onshore wind turbines in Europe. Energy 83, 217–229 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Ritter, M., Shen, Z., Cabrera, B. L., Odening, M. & Deckert, L. A new approach to assess wind energy potential. Energy Procedia 75, 671–676 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Silva Herran, D., Dai, H., Fujimori, S. & Masui, T. Global assessment of onshore wind power resources considering the distance to urban areas. Energy Policy 91, 75–86 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Jäger, T., McKenna, R. & Fichtner, W. The feasible onshore wind energy potential in Baden-Württemberg: a bottom-up methodology considering socio-economic constraints. Renew. Energy 96, 662–675 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Höltinger, S., Salak, B., Schauppenlehner, T., Scherhaufer, P. & Schmidt, J. Austria’s wind energy potential—a participatory modeling approach to assess socio-political and market acceptance. Energy Policy 98, 49–61 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Bosch, J., Staffell, I. & Hawkes, A. D. Temporally-explicit and spatially-resolved global onshore wind energy potentials. Energy 131, 207–217 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Kline, D., Heimiller, D., Cowlin, S. & Nrel. GIS Method for Developing Wind Supply Curves Technical Report NREL/TP-670-43053 (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, 2008).

  21. Eurek, K. et al. An improved global wind resource estimate for integrated assessment models. Energy Econ. 64, 552–567 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. McKenna, R., Hollnaicher, S. & Fichtner, W. Cost–potential curves for onshore wind energy: a high-resolution analysis for Germany. Appl. Energy 115, 103–115 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Lütkehus, I. et al. Potenzial der Windenergie an Land Technical Report (Umweltbundesamt, Dessau-Roßlau, 2013).

  24. Sliz-Szkliniarz, B. & Vogt, J. GIS-based approach for the evaluation of wind energy potential: a case study for the Kujawsko–Pomorskie Voivodeship. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 15, 1696–1707 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Fingersh, L., Hand, M. & Laxson, A. Wind Turbine Design Cost and Scaling Model Technical Report NREL/TP-500-40566 (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, 2006).

  26. Siyal, S. H. et al. Wind energy assessment considering geographic and environmental restrictions in Sweden: a GIS-based approach. Energy 83, 447–461 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Finnish Wind Atlas (Finnish Meteorological Institute, 2008).

  28. Tammelin, B. et al. Production of the Finnish Wind Atlas. Wind Energy 16, 19–35 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Wind Turbines—Part 1: Design Requirements IEC 61400-1 (International Electrotechnical Commission, 2005).

  30. Wallasch, A.-K., Lüers, S., Rehfeldt, K. & Ekkert, M. Kostensituation der Windenergie an Land in Deutschland Technical Report SP13007A2 (Deutsche WindGuard GmbH, Varel, 2013).

  31. Lüers, S., Wallasch, A.-K. & Rehfeldt, K. Kostensituation der Windenergia an Land in Deutschland – Update Technical Report SP15027A1 (Deutsche WindGuard, Varel, 2015).

  32. Moné, C. et al. 2015 Cost of Wind Energy Review Technical Report NREL/TP-6A20-66861 (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, 2017).

  33. Energy Year 2016—Electricity (Finnish Energy, 2017).

  34. Volker, P. J. H., Hahmann, A. N., Badger, J. & Jørgensen, H. E. Prospects for generating electricity by large onshore and offshore wind farms. Environ. Res. Lett. 12, 034022 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Corine Land Cover 2012 (Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), 2014).

  36. Wind power spatial planning techniques Global Atlas Training on Planning the Renewable Energy Transition Using Solar and Wind Maps Session 2a (IRENA, 2015).

  37. Bredesen, R.E. et al. Wind Energy Projects in Cold Climates (IEA Wind, 2012); https://community.ieawind.org/task19/ourlibrary

  38. Power Curves Database Version 2016-08-18 (The Wind Power, 2016).

  39. Staffell, I. & Green, R. How does wind farm performance decline with age? Renew. Energy 66, 775–786 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Staffell, I. & Pfenninger, S. Using bias-corrected reanalysis to simulate current and future wind power output. Energy 114, 1224–1239 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Vakkilainen, E. & Kivistö, A. Comparison of electricity generation costs. Research Report 66, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lappeenranta, Finland (2017).

  42. Olauson, J., Edström, P. & Rydén, J. Wind turbine performance decline in Sweden. Wind Energy 20, 2049–2053 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Connection Fees (Fingrid Oyj, 2017).

  44. Rinne, E. Capacity Factors for Wind Turbines (Zenedo, 2017); https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.582537

  45. Turbines (Vestas Wind Systems, accessed 20 April 2017); https://www.vestas.com/en/products/turbines

  46. Turbines Database Version 2015-12-07 (The Wind Power, 2015).

  47. Natura 2000 Areas (Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), 2012).

  48. Nationally Designated Nature Protected Areas and Wilderness Reserves (Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), 2013).

  49. General Map 1:1,000,000 (National Land Survey of Finland, 2016).

  50. Tuulivoimalaohje (Liikennevirasto, Helsinki, 2012).

  51. Korkeusrajoitukset Paikkatietoaineistona (Finavia Oyj, 2016).

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland, project ‘Transition to a resource efficient and climate neutral electricity system (EL-TRAN)’, grant no. 314319. We thank E. Peltola and P. Antikainen at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland for the buffer radius estimates around miscellaneous land use functions (Supplementary Table 2).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Smart Energy and Transport Solutions, Espoo, Finland

    Erkka Rinne, Hannele Holttinen, Juha Kiviluoma & Simo Rissanen

Authors
  1. Erkka Rinne
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Hannele Holttinen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Juha Kiviluoma
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Simo Rissanen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

E.R. made the analysis, wrote the draft manuscript and was responsible for the final manuscript. H.H. and J.K. participated in the study design and in the writing of the manuscript. S.R. calculated the distances to roads and transmission grids and assessed icing losses, and also developed the methodology for calculating grid connection costs. All the authors commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Erkka Rinne.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figures 1–3, Supplementary Tables 1–5, Supplementary References

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rinne, E., Holttinen, H., Kiviluoma, J. et al. Effects of turbine technology and land use on wind power resource potential. Nat Energy 3, 494–500 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0137-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0137-9

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing