Another Successful EWEC
At EWEC this year there were a record 6,000 participants from 82 different countries. As EWEC 2008 drew to a close, EU Commissioner for Science and Research Janez Poto?nik, awarded the wind energy sector's most prestigious prize, the Poul la Cour prize. This went to Jos Beurskens, from the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), for his outstanding achievements and many years' service in the field of wind energy. Afterwards, Belgium handed over the role as host of EWEC to France, where next year's conference will be held, in Marseille, on 16-19 March 2009.
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{access view=!registered}Only logged in users can view the full text of the article.{/access}{access view=registered}Both the conference programme and the exhibition floor provided lots of news. It is clear that the wind sector is growing as more and more companies enter the industry.
At the exhibition this year there were several fairly new manufacturers of wind turbines. Most of these are focusing at the lower segment of around 1MW and leaving the high-end market to the already established players. At the start of the event Conergy Wind GmbH announced the sale of its first two PowerWind 56 (900kW) wind turbines. Furthermore, Vergnet from France introduced the Farwind 1MW at the show and Innovative Wind Power showed the Falcon 1.25MW. e.n.o. energy from Germany has also started to manufacture its own 1.8 and 2MW turbines. These wind turbines will be deployed and used in e.n.o. energy's own projects and in projects of partners of the e.n.o. group of companies to consolidate the value creation chain. With the continuing turbine shortage this might be a good decision.
The use of sodar and lidar for wind measurement is also increasing. In October 2007 Second Wind opened a new manufacturing facility to produce the Triton. The first Triton sonic wind profiler was shipped at the beginning of April, with more than 15 additional units shipped to customers over the following two months. Also, the ZephIR laser anemometer from Natural Power has recently been approved by the Renewable Energy Research Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst (UMass). UMass has undertaken a data validation experiment, which found that the system achieves correlation of 0.98 up to the tested height of 118 metres in comparison to traditional cup anemometers. UMass reported that the system is acceptable for use in wind resource assessment applications. It is for this reason that ZephIR has now been approved to be added to the Renewable Energy Research Laboratory (RERL) suite of wind speed measurement devices. A new player in this field is Catch the Wind. The company was founded in 2008 to manufacture laser wind sensors and has recently introduced a forward-looking, laser-based wind sensor system capable of sensing wind speed and direction at a distance. Named the Vindicator, the system utilises the latest aerospace industry technology to provide advance control information to wind farm turbines. On page 37 you will find the complete story about this company.
Enjoy reading,
Floris Siteur
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