German Wind Association Survey of Wind Turbine Service 2012

By Paul Gipe

 

At the World Wind Energy Association conference in Bonn this past July there was a session on operations and maintenance and service providers.

Carlo Reeker summarized the findings of annual survey by the German Wind Turbine Owners Associations, Bundesverband WindEnergie, BWE.

The association with 20,000 members, second only to the Danish Wind Turbine Owners Association in size worldwide and includes 3,000 companies and 17,000 individuals.

BWE has surveyed owners satisfaction with the service on their wind turbines for the past decade. This year’s survey covered 10,000 turbines.

Germany reached a peak in installations in 2002 when 3,000 MW were installed. Those turbines are now more than a decade old.

BWE found that more than 25% of the capacity is maintained by independent service providers. Two-thirds of the capacity is maintained under a full service contract by the original manufacturers.

Reeker also noted that BWE in cooperation with other renewable associations studied how Germany could reach 50% renewable energy in the electricity sector by 2020. Wind could contribute 150 TWh per year by 2020 and would require less than 2% of Germany’s land area to do so. To reach that level Germany would need to install 2,000 MW to 3,000 MW of wind capacity per year.

In 2011, Germany installed 2,000 MW of new wind capacity.