WindEurope

This is the first draft of the structure of the technical database that must be submitted by October 2024. It gives the public an idea of the data the project will work with , compile and produce in the holistic impact assessment. The full data will be published at the deadline.

Abstract. While modern wind turbines have become by far the largest rotating machines on Earth with further upscaling planned for the future, a renewed interest in small wind turbines (SWTs) is fostering energy transition and smart grid development. Small machines have traditionally not received the same level of aerodynamic refinement as their larger counterparts, resulting in lower efficiency, lower capacity factors, and therefore a higher cost of energy. In an effort to reduce this gap, research programs are developing worldwide. With this background, the scope of the present study is 2-fold. In the first part of this paper, an overview of the current status of the technology is presented in terms of technical maturity, diffusion, and cost. The second part of the study proposes five grand challenges that are thought to be key to fostering the development of small wind turbine technology in the near future, i.e. (1) improving energy conversion of modern SWTs through better design and control, especially in the case of turbulent wind; (2) better predicting long-term turbine performance with limited resource measurements and proving reliability; (3) improving the economic viability of small wind energy; (4) facilitating the contribution of SWTs to the energy demand and electrical system integration; (5) fostering engagement, social acceptance, and deployment for global distributed wind markets. To tackle these challenges, a series of unknowns and gaps are first identified and discussed. Based on them, improvement areas are suggested, for which 10 key enabling actions are finally proposed.

This report summarises findings on wind integration from the 17 countries or sponsors participating in the International Energy Agency Wind Technology Collaboration Programme (IEA Wind TCP) Task 25 from 2006-2020. Both real experience and studies are reported. Many wind integration studies incorporate solar energy, and most of the results discussed here are valid for other variable renewables in addition to wind. The national case studies address several impacts of wind power on electric power systems. In this report, they are grouped under long-term planning issues and short-term operational impacts. Long-term planning issues include grid planning and capacity adequacy. Short-term operational impacts include reliability, stability, reserves, and maximising the value of wind in operational timescales (balancing related issues). The first section presents the variability and uncertainty of power system-wide wind power, and the last section presents recent studies toward 100% shares of renewables. The appendix provides a summary of ongoing research in the national projects contributing to Task 25 for 2021-2024. The design and operation of power and energy systems is an evolving field. As ambitious targets toward net-zero carbon energy systems are announced globally, many scenarios are being made regarding how to reach these future decarbonized energy systems, most of them involving large amounts of variable renewables, mainly wind and solar energy. The secure operation of power systems is increasingly challenging, and the impacts of variable renewables, new electrification loads together with increased distribution system resources will lead to somewhat different challenges for different systems. Tools and methods to study future power and energy systems also need to evolve, and both shortterm operational aspects (such as power system stability) and long-term aspects (such as resource adequacy) will probably see new paradigms of operation and design. The experience of operating and planning systems with large amounts of variable generation is accumulating, and research to tackle the challenges of inverter-based, nonsynchronous generation is on the way. Energy transition and digitalization also bring new flexibility opportunities, both short and long term.

Airborne wind energy has the potential to evolve into a fundamental cornerstone of sustainable electricity generation. In this contextual analysis we discuss why this technology is emerging at this very moment in time and why it has the potential to disrupt the wind energy economy in the short term and the global energy markets in the longer term. We provide an order-of-magnitude estimate of the economic dimension of this scenario. Following this introductory chapter, the current technology status, principles and challenges of designing, building and flying an airborne wind energy device will be discussed.

On behalf of the European Academy of Wind Energy (EAWE1) and WindEurope (formerly the European Wind Energy Association, EWEA, until April 2016), we have the pleasure of presenting the Scientific Proceedings of the WindEurope Summit 2016.WindEurope Summit 2016 took place in Hamburg from 27-29 September 2016 and was one of the largest and most important meeting places of the wind energy industry, featuring 50 thematic sessions with more than 300 oral and 200 poster presentations. Known previously as EWEA's Annual Conference and as the European Wind Energy Conference before that, it has included a Science & Research component since 2007. The event is a well-known meeting place that allows engineers and scientists to present their latest findings to a mixed audience consisting of both researchers and industry experts. The industry involvement helps to focus the research, while the scientists often demonstrate relevant, novel ideas and solutions to problems of current industrial interest. This often leads to interesting comments and discussions that have an impact well beyond the conference boundaries.In the course of continuously improving the conference experience, in 2015 the organisers decided to combine scientific and general content in all conference sessions, rather than reserving the presentation of the Science & Research contributions in a separate track as was done at previous editions. Sessions at EWEA Annual Event 2015 were therefore combinations of general and of scientific presentations, which allowed for a more flexible choice of topics. In particular small research topics could also be accommodated in the context of a wider session. This successful setup of the conference has been carried over to this year's event in Hamburg.The improvements continue this year, with an agreement between WindEurope and IOP Publishing, which allows for the scientific contributions to be published in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series, an Open Access journal managed by the Institute of Physics (IOP). The European Academy of Wind Energy has for some time recommended such an arrangement, and we are very happy to see this happen. The most important advantage is that conference papers will be much more visible, being fully indexed and online available free of charge to anyone, while the authors retain their copyright under the permissive IOP Proceedings License. The IOP also provides long-term archival and access.All papers published in this volume originate from scientific contributions presented in the oral sessions of WindEurope Summit 2016, and have been peer-reviewed in order to ensure strict, international research standards. Selected papers, suitably extended and rewritten, will additionally be invited and considered for the new Wind Energy Science journal of the EAWE.The proceedings in this volume consist of 21 papers covering a wide spectrum of wind energy research. The topics include aerodynamic investigations and blade design, controller design for load mitigation, forecasting of power production, investigations related to wind turbine wakes, atmospheric stability and monitoring of turbines, as well as contributions concerned with floating supportstructures, optimal strategies for bidding on the energy market and mathematical failure modeling for offshore wind turbines, among others.As with previous events, the European Academy of Wind Energy is responsible for organizing the review process for scientific contributions, has contributed to develop the sessions, and provides scientific chairs for all sessions. All papers were peer-reviewed by a Scientific Committee, consisting of scientists from EAWE member institutes and their associates. We thank all authors for their willingness to take part in this procedure, including the strict deadlines imposed by the tight publication schedule, and the reviewers for their hard work alongside their daily business. WindEurope is responsible for the organisation and logistics of the conference, and we thank their highly professional staff and their associates for the excellent collaboration.1http://www.eawe.eu/