Trends in the development and implementation of wind energy technology

The installed power over the world is distributed very unevenly: only five countries (USA, Denmark, Germany, India and Spain) make up 80 % of the total installed capacity. Also the annual growth of the capacity is unevenly distributed: in one year (1998) Germany installed more than twice the cumulative present wind capacity of the Netherlands, although the exploitable wind resources in both countries are of the same order of magnitude. Trying to identify the success factors could provide us with the basis for strategies to multiply the developments in less successful regions. Considering the fact that the growth of wind capacity is concentrated in a limited number of countries this could create confidence in a continuous growth taking place in many more countries. In twenty years time the world wide annual installation rate of wind turbines has increased from a few megawatts to over 2,000 MW. Commercial machines have grown in size from 10 kW (5 meter rotor diameter) to almost 2,000 kW (70 meter diameter). At present the installed wind capacity in the world is about 10,400 MW. In the eighties the generation cost of wind electricity were reduced by a factor 10 (in 10 years time). Since the early nineties cost reduction was slower, but continuous. There is still a perspective for further cost reduction of 25 to 35 % compared to the present level. 4 refs