With the growing focus on harnessing the natural energy of the wind to create electricity, the wind turbine composite materials market is also growing around the world. The idea is simple: with an increase in the number of windmills being established, the amount of raw materials that are used to construct them will also rise. The turbine is the most important component of such a system, as this is what actually taps the energy of the wind and transfers it to the generator, by rotating the connecting shaft, whereby electricity is produced by electromagnetic induction.
With the rising pollution levels, governments around the world are targeting rapid reduction in the production of energy from fossil fuels and increment in the amount being generated via green methods. In several countries, feed-in tariffs are offered to utilities which generate electricity from renewable resources, such as the sun and wind. Similarly, financial support is being provided in the form of tax benefits and other schemes in several nations, to make purchasing wind power generating equipment easier, which is further leading to a surging demand for composite materials.
Apart from the number of wind towers, even their production capacity is surging. The electricity generation ability is directly proportional to the diameter of the rotor, which itself depends on the length of the turbine blade. Therefore, longer the rotor diameter, higher the amount of power produced. IRENA says that in 1985, the typical diameter of the rotor was 15 meters, and the power output of an individual wind tower was 0.05 megawatts (MW). Now, the power output has increased massively to 8 MW, and the rotors are up to 164 meters across. Thus, with the lengthening of the blades, the demand for composite materials for their manufacturing is also rising.
The reason composites are used for constructing wind turbines is that the materials needs to be light enough to generate maximum rotation when driven by the wind and also strong enough to not break in strong gusts. Since composites are light as well as strong, thereby fulfilling both these requirements, they are the material of choice for manufacturing the various components of the wind turbines, such as the blades and nacelles. As stated above, the amount of electricity produced depends on the length of the blades, which is why higher amounts of composite materials are utilized for the construction of blades, compared to nacelles.
Geographically, Asia-Pacific (APAC) has been the largest wind turbine composite materials market, historically, which is because it is the largest producer of wind energy in the world. The two largest onshore wind farms on earth are in China and India, which have a cumulative capacity to generate around 8.5 GW of clean electricity. Of the total wind energy generation capacity added throughout the world, around 50% was added in China alone, according to the oil supermajor BP PLC.
Hence, as more wind towers are erected, the demand for composite materials for the turbines will keep growing.
