Sustainable Wind Turbines

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1 ENERGY, PROCESS & UTILITIES Sustainable Wind Turbines Faster Time-to-Market with Improved Reliability and Lower Cost The diversification of energy sources has given rise to thousands of inland and offshore wind farm projects worldwide. To meet demand, wind turbine manufacturers must increase their production capacity while keeping cost down. The Sustainable Wind Turbines Industry Solution Experience, powered by the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform, helps innovate and improve cost effectiveness by reducing waste, accelerating time-to-market, and improving quality.

2 Contents 2 Executive Summary 3 Industry Trends and Challenges 6 Building Better Turbines 6 Wind Turbine Costs 7 Wind Turbine Design Innovations 7 Wind Turbine Manufacturing Throughput and Quality 8 Composite Blade Development 10 Simulation and Optimization of Turbine Behavior 11 Manufacturing Planning 12 Composite Blade Production and Quality Control 13 Conclusion

3 Executive Summary The wind energy industry is currently in a tremendous state of flux. On the one hand, the drive for cleaner energy has resulted in a significant demand for wind energy, which in turn provides wind turbine manufacturers with the opportunity to considerably ramp up production. On the other hand, increased competition, a decrease in government grants and subsidies, and lower natural gas prices in many parts of the world have placed tremendous pressure on the wind energy industry to reduce the cost of wind energy. After being predominantly a European trend at the end of the 20 th century, wind power has spread globally in the first decade of the 21 st century with China and the United States taking the lead over Europe. Wind power is now truly becoming a global phenomenon with several countries earnestly entering this industry. The Global Wind Power Cumulative Capacity reached a very impressive 238 gigawatts (GW) by the end of 2011 (source: GWEC), which is greater than the installed capacity of a large country like India. Wind power currently supplies only 2.5 percent of the world s electricity demand. Several countries have set aggressive targets to increase the percentage of power generated from wind by more than 20 percent by 2030, which means that the installed capacity has to be increased manyfold. The global wind power capacity is forecast to increase by about 8 percent annually (source: GWEC 2011 annual report). But there is still uncertainty over the future of government grants and subsidies that currently boost wind energy, particularly the U.S. Production Tax Credit. With general economic conditions not improving worldwide, there are controversial political discussions in many countries about the extension of such programs. The wind energy industry is bracing for big cuts in government support and needs to do more to be cost-effective against lower-cost fossil fuels (such as natural gas in the U.S.) and to improve the grid infrastructure in advanced countries. Since wind turbines represent the majority of the total cost (65 percent for onshore) of a wind farm, the industry is looking for ways to reduce the cost of wind turbines, while improving their reliability. Many wind turbine manufacturers are struggling with very narrow operating margins due to increased competition and some oversupply. They are eagerly seeking ways to reduce their development and operating costs, while improving the performance and quality of wind turbines. They also need continuous innovation to increase their competitiveness and market share. Wind turbine manufacturers and suppliers are constantly investigating, along with research agencies, new materials and concepts for their designs. As the size of wind turbines increases, the design of blades, control systems, and structures becomes more complex. The new designs need to be quickly tested for fatigue and twisting under various operating conditions. The design then needs to be certified by certifying agencies to bring them to market as quickly as possible. Manufacturers are also increasingly looking at automating production to increase throughput and production quality. The Sustainable Wind Turbines 3DEXPERIENCE provides a complete solution for companies to design, analyze, and plan the manufacture of the entire wind turbine, including key components like blades. Virtual testing of blade components reduces the need for expensive prototypes and greatly minimizes testing time and costs. Sustainable Wind Turbines 2

4 Industry Trends and Challenges The wind turbine industry is at a crossroads in its development. After being mostly a European trend at the end of the 20 th century, wind energy has spread globally in the first decade of the 21 st century with China and the United States taking the lead over Europe. Wind power is now truly becoming a global phenomenon with several countries earnestly entering this market. There is a natural increase in the demand for more electricity as the world population and living standards increase. Fossil fuels still provide most of the world s energy needs for electricity and transportation. However, due to concerns about global warming and climate change, as well as the risk of depletion of affordable fossil fuels and geopolitical uncertainties in several regions that are major suppliers of fossil fuels, several countries are turning towards renewable sources to satisfy their energy needs. The European Union (E.U.) is leading the charge against global warming and is trying to increase investments in the development of renewable sources of energy. Their objective is to cover the majority of their capacity increases with renewable sources. There have been recent discussions in the E.U. about the risk of a decrease in new investments for the development of renewable energy from sources like wind, and even if they should invest in shale gas exploration in the future. However, up to now, environmental safety issues concerning the hydraulic fracturing ( fracking ) technique used to create the wells has prompted the E.U. to forbid unconventional gas exploration and production in Europe. Can politics override the global trend to search for and exploit this form of energy? Though initiatives like a carbon trading system ( cap-andtrade ) need to be continually strengthened to continue the drive against global warming, the U.S. is struggling to implement systems like cap-and-trade because of a lack of political consensus. Availability of cheap natural gas provides a cost alternative source of energy. In addition to the U.S., a few other countries such as China and Argentina also have unconventional gas sources that have yet to be fully developed. In today s economic environment, this places tremendous pressure on these countries to use natural gas to meet their increasing energy demands. Since natural gas emits about half the CO 2 that coal does for power generation, countries can claim a decrease in carbon emissions (compared to coal) for political reasons by utilizing more natural gas. The wind industry needs to reduce its levelized energy cost to be comparable to natural gas plants. Otherwise, fundamental economics will dictate that more new investments will be made to develop the natural gas industry than in renewable sources like wind. Top 10 new installed capacity Jan-Dec 2011 The global cumulative wind power capacity has been steadily increasing in the last several years from 6 GW in 1996 to reach almost 239 GW by end of ** Provisional Figure Source: GWEC 3 Sustainable Wind Turbines

5 Source: U.S Energy Information Administrtion, Annual Energy Outlook 2012, January 2012, DOE/EIA-0383 (2012). As shown in the table above from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the levelized energy cost of onshore wind is comparable to other conventional energy sources, with the exception of natural gas-combined cycle plants. In most other countries, wind power remains as competitive as other energy sources. Figure 1 shows the levelized energy costs in the U.K. Though onshore and offshore wind farms have higher capital costs, onshore has the cheapest levelized cost. Even the levelized energy cost of offshore wind is comparable to other energy sources. Wind as a fuel does not cost money, and is possibly the only source of energy that can serve several remote areas of the world. The cost of wind power is expected to continue to go down over the next several years due to increased product performance, availability, and innovation. In the short term, wind energy still needs additional political support to continue the impressive growth trajectory it has been on over the last few years. Sustainable Wind Turbines 4

6 Figure 1. Levelized costs of main technologies for projects started in mix of FOAK and NOAK: /MW Gas - CCGT Gas - CCGT + CCS FOAK ASC Coal - with FGD ASC Coal + CCS FOAK Coal - IGCC FOAK Coal - IGCC + CCS FOAK Onshore Wind Onshore Wind FOAK Onshore Wind R3 FOAK Nuclear - PWR FOAK CO2 transport and storage Decomm and waste fund Carbon Costs Fuel Costs Variable Operating Costs Fixed operating Costs Capital Costs Source: Matt MacDonald Another major problem many countries face is when wind energy production reaches a significant percentage of a country s energy production, the country s power grid is not able to remain stable enough to handle the intermittent nature of energy production. As countries ramp up their energy production from renewable sources like wind, they need to significantly enhance their grid infrastructure. In Germany, where wind and solar cover a substantial percentage of energy production, there are already many issues about how to back up the intermittent renewable energy sources and deal with the increase in micro-cuts that seriously affect industrial production. Many conventional power plant operators are complaining that decreasing the output from their plants is adversely affecting their return on investment (ROI). Ideas like negative pricing for renewable excessive energy production or capacity revenue for conventional power plants are on the table. This would decrease the ROI of renewable energy production. As the development of onshore areas with high winds increases, focus is shifted to areas with medium winds and offshore. Continuous improvements are required to further reduce offshore wind costs and to eliminate the industry s reliance on subsidies and grants. Bigger wind turbines are required to exploit sites with medium wind speeds and offshore farms for these to be cost-effective. Though Enercon currently has the largest deployed wind turbine per capacity at 7.58 megawatts (MW), several companies are working on a 10 MW turbine. Rotor diameters have attained 120 meters (m), and this is expected to increase in the future. See Figure 2. Figure 2. Wind turbine per capacity and rotor diameters since Sustainable Wind Turbines

7 Building Better Turbines Wind turbine manufacturers are constantly innovating with new designs, materials, and manufacturing processes. New innovations include drivetrain gearless direct drives, modular designs, lower solidity towers, and intelligent controls. Companies are also looking to automate their production to improve reliability and to increase standardization and the adoption of best production practices. Companies can then potentially manufacture the same product or component at several factories worldwide. This enables greater manufacturing flexibility and allows production closer to the wind farms where they will be deployed, thereby reducing logistics and transportation costs. Some wind energy industry opponents argue that the energy consumed during turbine manufacturing is very high. The steel production process for the tower and the cement production process for the concrete foundations, in particular, offset carbon savings from the wind turbine during its operation. So any innovation in design and manufacturing needs to reduce the environmental footprint of the manufacturing process. Minimizing material consumption, waste, and defects during production are ways to make wind manufacturing more sustainable. Wind Turbine Costs Surprisingly, and contrary to traditional beliefs, wind turbine costs (measured in cost per kilowatt (kw) of capacity) have increased in the first decade of the 21 st century following a strong decrease in the previous decade. The good news is that prices have started to go down again since 2009, particularly in China, which is now the largest wind turbine market. Costs can greatly vary between countries. The wind turbine price in China is between one-half to one-third the price in many other countries due to heightened competition. Among wind turbine components, the most expensive are the tower and the blades, which account for 25 and 20 percent respectively of the total cost, followed by the gearbox at 11 percent (see Figure 3). The electrical components and the balance of the plant make up the rest of the CAPEX. Rotor blades 20% Gearbox 11% Power convertor 4% Generator 3% Pich & Yaw bearings 2% Figure 3. CAPEX cost breakdown for a wind turbine Tower 25% Other Nacelle Components and balance of Plant 35% Source: Wind Power Engineering Sustainable Wind Turbines 6

8 According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) June 2012 report on wind power, some prices can be reduced thanks to orders from offshore farms, which usually have a very large number of wind turbines, enabling them to benefit from economies of scale and lower prices from competitors. However, for wind turbine manufacturers, improving efficiency in R&D and manufacturing can help reduce their costs. The IRENA report points out that: Improving blade design (with production and aerodynamic efficiency in mind) can help reduce weight and costs. The R&D focus for gearboxes is to improve reliability and reduce costs. Vertical integration of gearbox manufacturing by wind turbine suppliers should help bring costs down. Cost reductions can also be found by increasing the share of gearless drive generators using permanent magnet synchronous motors. There are opportunities for cost reductions in all other electrical and miscellaneous components of the turbine by increasing manufacturing efficiency and R&D efforts. Wind Turbine Design Innovations A wind turbine s impacts on the environment include noise, shadow flicker, avian mortality, and visual impact. The biggest influence wind turbine manufacturers can have is in controlling noise. Technological innovations such as gearless drivetrains will help reduce the noise level of turbines. Innovations in composite blades provide wind turbine manufacturers with an excellent opportunity to improve their product while reducing costs. Failures of wind turbine blades during the operations phase can be quite expensive US$200,000 for blade replacement and US$200,000 for installation. The wind turbine manufacturer has to test the product in various operating conditions to ensure maximum reliability. The wind industry can learn from the aerospace industry when it comes to composites engineering and manufacturing. Design of composite blades can be optimized for performance, number of plies, and weight with advanced composite design software. Calculations of vibrations, nonlinear deformation and stresses, fracture and failure, and multiphysics effects, such as fluid-structure interactions, can greatly improve the performance and reliability of the turbine. Wind Turbine Manufacturing Throughput and Quality Wind turbine manufacturers are looking for ways to ramp up production to fulfill their current order backlog and the expected future demand, especially from offshore wind farms. Several manufacturers experience numerous quality challenges during the production of composite blades. This is due to the complexity of the manufacturing process and the behavior and correlation of the variables involved. Several manufacturers are struggling with high rejection rates due to a lack of process control. 7 Sustainable Wind Turbines

9 Composite Blade Development Wind turbine blades are one of the most critical components of the wind turbine. Blades are subjected to large variations in stress while operating in different conditions throughout the year, such as temperature variations and severe weather like rain and ice. Even during a single cycle, blades experience varying stresses due to increasing wind speeds with altitude and wake effects of surrounding blades, which have a fatigue effect on the blades. Composites are ideal for wind turbine blades because they possess some unique properties. Composite materials have high rigidity, fatigue, and wear resistance, as well as low weight and rotational inertia. Along with the aerospace industry, the wind energy industry has made tremendous progress with composite materials and manufacturing technology in recent years. The design of composite blades involves the design of a complex blade surface, the plies, manufacturability studies, aerodynamics analyses, and tests for stress and fatigue (see Figure 4). For many blade manufacturers, preliminary design, detailed design, analysis, and manufacturing of composite blades are often siloed processes. Data transfer and exchange between each disparate system may require considerable time and effort, as they do not share a common information backbone. Manufacturers focus on innovation in blade design, such as optimizing the number of plies and blade weight. Such tasks require close interaction and iteration between all teams design, analysis, and manufacturing during blade development. The Sustainable Wind Turbines 3DEXPERIENCE provides an unparalleled, comprehensive solution that manages all aspects of composite blade development from preliminary design all the way to testing and structural certification. By working collaboratively and interactively in a global integrated environment, designers, analysts, and manufacturing engineers can ensure a reliable and robust design of composite blades. The Sustainable Wind Turbines 3DEXPERIENCE can be used to minimize blade weight by reducing the number of plies required and help ensure reliability of the blades by testing under various operating conditions. The 3DEXPERIENCE offers a collaborative working framework, and an integrated data model, where applications for design, analysis, and manufacturing can work in a single source of truth platform. The capabilities include: Preliminary design fast-sketch capabilities provide the ability to rapidly generate a stacking and ply shape definition, which can be quickly optimized by varying global parameters. Detailed design generates plies from the preliminary design input. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform offers several algorithms for ply generation, generation of associative solid and IML, and 3D visualization enabling validation of the design. Structural analysis benefits from the composite definition and the transfer of property benefits from design to simulation (including manufacturability details such as fiber orientation). Analysis of various loading conditions through simulation to assess the possibility of failure. Depending on the results, the analyst can modify the design during analysis in order to reduce the risk of failure (e.g., add reinforcement). Manufacturability analysis is made according to the process type. The blade manufacturing process is detailed by determining the layup strategy, the possibility of adding darts, and by optimizing the flattened shapes in order to deliver manufacturing documentation to the shop floor. Unique functions such as co-review and co-design to foster collaboration between all users and stakeholders Sustainable Wind Turbines 8

10 Figure 4. Composite design of a blade By working collaboratively and interactively in a global integrated environment, designers, analysts, and manufacturing engineers can ensure a reliable and robust design of composite blades. The Sustainable Wind Turbines 3DEXPERIENCE can be used to minimize blade weight by reducing the number of plies required and help ensure reliability of the blades by testing under various operating conditions. 9 Sustainable Wind Turbines

11 Simulation and Optimization of Turbine Behavior Wind turbines operate at various sites across the globe and have to withstand extreme temperature and climatic conditions such as ice, hail, and hurricanes. It is very important to predict the real-world behavior of the turbine under all of these conditions to ensure maximum performance and reliability. Wind turbine manufacturers are subjected to very high warranty costs (about US$400,000 per blade) if the blade has to be replaced while the wind turbine is in operation. The goal is to maximize the availability of the turbine for its entire lifespan, which is about 20 years. The key capabilities that the Sustainable Wind Turbines 3DEXPERIENCE provides include: Multi-body dynamics to connect parts and run simulations of complete assemblies, with parts designed and tested in one environment, holistically, to work together. Designs can be explored quickly with DOE (Design of Experiments) calculations. Simulation of severe natural events, such as hail, that can permanently damage the composite material of the blades. Impact analysis shows the damage caused to the blade (see Figure 5). Crack propagation analysis using an XFEM (Extended Finite Element Method) model. A Topological Optimization Module to optimize part weight per geometric restrictions. This is valid and useful for all parts of the turbine. Optimization of turbine design, such as minimizing the number of plies of the composite blades, while maintaining the required performance and reliability. Advanced functions, such as smoothed-particle hydrodynamics, including failure analysis. Many companies develop physical prototypes to test the performance of wind turbine components. This is a very expensive process and can take several months to complete. Advanced simulations enable manufacturers to accurately predict complex real-world behavior of the turbines. This includes vibrations, nonlinear deformation and stresses, fracture and failure, and multiphysics effects, like fluidstructure interactions. Manufacturers can perform sensitivity studies, identify optimum design parameters, and quickly engineer market-leading wind turbines. By performing these analyses virtually, companies can reduce their development costs and time. Figure 5. Simulation stress of a wind turbine tower The Sustainable Wind Turbines 3DEXPERIENCE provides an industry-leading solution to simulate and optimize all the components of a wind turbine including the blades, tower, and drivetrain. Sustainable Wind Turbines 10

12 Manufacturing Planning Though many wind turbine manufacturers have a healthy order backlog, they are seeking solutions to lower costs, and to quickly ramp up their production, while increasing quality and reliability. Manufacturing planning in a virtual environment allows companies to plan and validate the manufacturing processes in a virtual 3D environment, enabling them to identify and resolve issues up front, and to manufacture products right the first time (see Figure 6). Doing so lowers manufacturing costs, while increasing wind turbine quality and reliability. Companies need to continue to innovate in the face of increased competition from low-cost manufacturers. Many are adopting automated production methods, such as using robots for composite manufacturing processes. Such automated methods provide them with greater flexibility to complete most of the work in a single station. Moreover, companies can produce multiple products in a single manufacturing facility. Automated manufacturing of composite blades reduces waste compared to manual processes, saving the company money. Increased automation also minimizes the exposure of shop floor workers to toxic composite materials, improving health and safety. Investments in automated production systems incur high capital costs. By validating the production systems in a virtual environment, manufacturers can verify if these systems can enable the company to achieve its goals, which can help it justify the capital investment (see Figure 7). Automation in manufacturing enables companies to standardize their best practices across all their global manufacturing facilities. Companies can then utilize local manufacturing factories that are close to the wind farm site where the wind turbine will be installed to produce the wind turbine components, thereby reducing their logistics and transportation costs. The Sustainable Wind Turbine 3DEXPERIENCE provides key manufacturing planning features that help manufacturers: Define the manufacturing process sequence using the design data Reuse company standard processes and best practices for planning Define the layout of the factory using standard resource libraries Design specific resources with advanced features like kinematics Plan the manufacturing systems and operations to minimize cycle time, increase throughput of the production facility, and optimally utilize resources Program and simulate resources like robots and Numerical Control (NC) machines (validated programs can be directly downloaded to the controllers using offline programming) The single source of truth for the product definition between design and manufacturing enables concurrent engineering between manufacturing and design. By simultaneously and iteratively performing manufacturing planning with the design, companies can reduce the time needed to validate the Figure 6. Wind turbine blade manufacturing process 11 Sustainable Wind Turbines

13 Practical Validation design, enable early start of production, and reduce time-tomarket. By providing design with early feedback, issues can be detected much earlier in the development process, thereby eliminating costly manufacturing problems and delays. Opponents of wind energy often raise the energy consumed and material waste incurred during the manufacturing of wind turbines as one of the drawbacks of wind energy. Companies need to produce products in a sustainable manner to reduce the environmental footprint during manufacturing. Manufacturing planning can help companies produce right the first time, thereby minimizing material wastage and utilizing resources efficiently. Manufacturing planning in a virtual environment allows companies to decrease production and installation costs, reduce product development time, and justify capital investment costs. Composite Blade Production and Quality Control Production of composite blades is a challenging process that involves controlling several variables and understanding their correlation. Several companies experience very high rejection rates during blade production (greater than 25 percent). Even a small improvement in the rejection rate can save a company millions of dollars per year. Opportunity for Changes Cumulative Cost of Changes Opportunity for Changes Cumulative Cost of Changes Virtual Validation in Digital Factory Traditional Methodology: Physical Validation Start of Production A number of production defects, such as voids, wrinkles, and delamination, can cause blades to be scrapped. It is hard to isolate the cause of the defects, because they can occur even if all the variables are within the permissible range, due to the complex correlation between them. Traditional methods like SPC (Statistical Process Control) are not sufficient to solve these challenges. These methods require a very large number of data points to be statistically relevant, which may be too expensive to measure or just impossible in composites manufacturing. The Sustainable Wind Turbines 3DEXPERIENCE provides a unique solution to monitor and control production quality. The solution provides a data-driven, rules-based, continuous process improvement methodology for blade manufacturing. It is based on inductive logic programming that aims to identify the right combination of parameters to achieve the right product quality. The solution can work with a small set of data points, and continuously improves the production process based on the results, in real time. The analysis of shop floor data helps discover hidden root causes for defects. By capturing best practices in natural language rules, companies can capitalize and reuse acquired knowledge. Monitoring shop floor data helps quantify the risk of defects. With this solution, customers can develop agile process control, enabling experts to extract, optimize, and validate a robust set of easy-to-read operational best practices. Some of the key process monitoring and control features of the Sustainable Wind Turbines 3DEXPERIENCE include: Easy collection of shop floor data in real time Quick identification of root causes of failure Ability to discover and edit rules with experts (knowledge capture) Understanding the quantified influence of process variables Ability to obtain advance warning of potential problems Ability to adjust processes in real time depending on changing conditions Monitoring rules compliance and receiving notification when new rules may be needed Start of Production Figure 7 - Business benefits from manufacturing planning Sustainable Wind Turbines 12

14 Conclusion To be successful in this challenging environment, wind turbine manufacturers and their equipment suppliers need a best-in-class engineering and manufacturing solution that addresses all their challenges. The Sustainable Wind Turbines 3DEXPERIENCE provides a single source of truth backbone, integrating information from all disciplines and applications. It provides a collaborative environment allowing all users and stakeholders to work concurrently and collaboratively. Based on proven practices in both the aerospace and wind industries, the Sustainable Wind Turbines 3DEXPERIENCE provides an integrated composites engineering solution made up of the best composite modeling, simulation, and manufacturability assessment tools. Manufacturers struggle with defects during production and need to control their production process. The Sustainable Wind Turbines 3DEXPERIENCE provides a logic-based, data-driven, rule-based continuous process improvement methodology specifically tailored for complex processes, such as the production of composite parts. The Sustainable Wind Turbines 3DEXPERIENCE helps manufacturers decrease their development and operating costs, reduce engineering and manufacturing time, and increase product quality. As a result, companies will develop and deliver better performing wind turbines faster in a more global and competitive environment. Our 3DEXPERIENCE platform powers our brand applications, serving 12 industries, and provides a rich portfolio of industry solution experiences. Dassault Systèmes, the 3DExperience Company, provides business and people with virtual universes to imagine sustainable innovations. Its world-leading solutions transform the way products are designed, produced, and supported. Dassault Systèmes collaborative solutions foster social innovation, expanding possibilities for the virtual world to improve the real world. The group brings value to over 170,000 customers of all sizes in all industries in more than 140 countries. For more information, visit Dassault Systèmes. All rights reserved. 3DEXPERIENCE, the Compass icon and the 3DS logo, CATIA, SOLIDWORKS, ENOVIA, DELMIA, SIMULIA, GEOVIA, EXALEAD, 3D VIA, BIOVIA, and NETVIBES are commercial trademarks or registered trademarks of Dassault Systèmes or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are owned by their respective owners. Use of any Dassault Systèmes or its subsidiaries trademarks is subject to their express written approval. Americas Dassault Systèmes 175 Wyman Street Waltham, Massachusetts USA Europe/Middle East/Africa Dassault Systèmes 10, rue Marcel Dassault CS Vélizy-Villacoublay Cedex France Asia-Pacific Dassault Systèmes K.K. ThinkPark Tower Osaki, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo Japan