Post by account_disabled on Feb 24, 2024 22:39:18 GMT -7
Spiral Welded Wind Turbine Tower
Keystone Tower Systems of Denver says it can reduce the cost of wind power with technology borrowed from pipe manufacturing. It uses spiral welding techniques to wind sheets of steel into huge on-site turbine towers, stronger, faster and cheaper than current techniques.
Stronger winds tend to be higher up, but as this study shows , higher-mounted turbines that catch stronger winds don't necessarily equate to the lowest energy cost. In fact, once the costs of stronger foundations and taller, sturdier towers are taken into account, anything over m tends to result in more expensive electricity, and in a market as price-sensitive as the of energy, that's bad news.
Somewhere around half of the levelized cost of energy (LCoE) at an average commercial wind energy facility comes directly from the cost of the wind turbines, according to the NREL . Of that, almost half of the money is in the nacelle at the top, and the rest is split between the rotors, which contribute about % to the LCoE, and the tower itself, about %. .
But as towers get larger, their share of the initial CAPEX (capital expenditure) increases disproportionately . A m tower could represent % of a project's CAPEX, while a m tower becomes % of the cost. And that's not to mention the additional logistical problems involved in handling massive machinery like this.
Keystone says it has a solution for tower ma C Level Executive List nufacturing that reduces the price of large towers so much that it "makes wind power the lowest-cost energy source available, not just on the open plains, but around the world." .
The idea is quite simple; Instead of creating a series of cylindrical "cans," trucking them to the turbine site and welding them together to create the final tower structure, Keystone proposes quickly building small manufacturing facilities on site, then trucking in steel coils. in bulk, or even flat sheets, which can be welded to form longer strips. These coils or strips are fed into angle bending machines that bend them into a spiral shape, which is welded along the seam line continuously as the steel is turned. Much of the process is automated.
The result, Keystone says, is full-length towers, or shorter sections if that's logistically easier, produced times faster than a standard factory can make them, using up to % less labor. There may also be savings in the foundations used for spiral welded towers. The factory can be ready to go in about a month, and on-site construction means it can make the kind of large-diameter sections that simply wouldn't fit under bridges if you made them in a factory and shipped them.
This transportation restriction, according to Reuters, currently keeps the maximum diameter at m, limiting the tower's height to around m. Keystone's technology can scale to produce towers over m in diameter, for towers up to m tall and more. Onshore wind farms can therefore operate taller towers, with longer blades, drive larger turbines and produce more energy.
Spiral welding is a well-established technology when it comes to pipe manufacturing, so the process of creating and quality inspecting these long sections of pipe is already proven. Keystone says it also results in "better fatigue and buckling performance," allowing towers of a given height to be made with less steel. And since the manufacturing plant is essentially mobile, it's easy enough to temporarily place one next to a dock and fire up dozens of sections or entire towers for offshore installations.
While the mobile factory unit is a key part of Keystone's game, it also established its own manufacturing plant in Texas, and from this factory produced the tower for its first live installation, in collaboration with General Electric Renewable Energy.
This first product is an m spiral welded tower for GE's - turbine. Certified for a -year lifespan, the tower is designed to be a simple replacement for standard GE towers. Presumably it will provide a good commercial scale case study from which to proceed.
Certainly, Keystone is a small operation at the moment, surviving largely on subsidies from the US government. In this type of manufacturing, economies of scale are needed before you can start promising big savings to customers. But the tower is clearly a major part of the cost of a finished wind turbine, as well as a limiting factor in the size vs power equation, so Keystone's spiral welding technique could still become a strong lever to move costs. of renewable energy.
Keystone Tower Systems of Denver says it can reduce the cost of wind power with technology borrowed from pipe manufacturing. It uses spiral welding techniques to wind sheets of steel into huge on-site turbine towers, stronger, faster and cheaper than current techniques.
Stronger winds tend to be higher up, but as this study shows , higher-mounted turbines that catch stronger winds don't necessarily equate to the lowest energy cost. In fact, once the costs of stronger foundations and taller, sturdier towers are taken into account, anything over m tends to result in more expensive electricity, and in a market as price-sensitive as the of energy, that's bad news.
Somewhere around half of the levelized cost of energy (LCoE) at an average commercial wind energy facility comes directly from the cost of the wind turbines, according to the NREL . Of that, almost half of the money is in the nacelle at the top, and the rest is split between the rotors, which contribute about % to the LCoE, and the tower itself, about %. .
But as towers get larger, their share of the initial CAPEX (capital expenditure) increases disproportionately . A m tower could represent % of a project's CAPEX, while a m tower becomes % of the cost. And that's not to mention the additional logistical problems involved in handling massive machinery like this.
Keystone says it has a solution for tower ma C Level Executive List nufacturing that reduces the price of large towers so much that it "makes wind power the lowest-cost energy source available, not just on the open plains, but around the world." .
The idea is quite simple; Instead of creating a series of cylindrical "cans," trucking them to the turbine site and welding them together to create the final tower structure, Keystone proposes quickly building small manufacturing facilities on site, then trucking in steel coils. in bulk, or even flat sheets, which can be welded to form longer strips. These coils or strips are fed into angle bending machines that bend them into a spiral shape, which is welded along the seam line continuously as the steel is turned. Much of the process is automated.
The result, Keystone says, is full-length towers, or shorter sections if that's logistically easier, produced times faster than a standard factory can make them, using up to % less labor. There may also be savings in the foundations used for spiral welded towers. The factory can be ready to go in about a month, and on-site construction means it can make the kind of large-diameter sections that simply wouldn't fit under bridges if you made them in a factory and shipped them.
This transportation restriction, according to Reuters, currently keeps the maximum diameter at m, limiting the tower's height to around m. Keystone's technology can scale to produce towers over m in diameter, for towers up to m tall and more. Onshore wind farms can therefore operate taller towers, with longer blades, drive larger turbines and produce more energy.
Spiral welding is a well-established technology when it comes to pipe manufacturing, so the process of creating and quality inspecting these long sections of pipe is already proven. Keystone says it also results in "better fatigue and buckling performance," allowing towers of a given height to be made with less steel. And since the manufacturing plant is essentially mobile, it's easy enough to temporarily place one next to a dock and fire up dozens of sections or entire towers for offshore installations.
While the mobile factory unit is a key part of Keystone's game, it also established its own manufacturing plant in Texas, and from this factory produced the tower for its first live installation, in collaboration with General Electric Renewable Energy.
This first product is an m spiral welded tower for GE's - turbine. Certified for a -year lifespan, the tower is designed to be a simple replacement for standard GE towers. Presumably it will provide a good commercial scale case study from which to proceed.
Certainly, Keystone is a small operation at the moment, surviving largely on subsidies from the US government. In this type of manufacturing, economies of scale are needed before you can start promising big savings to customers. But the tower is clearly a major part of the cost of a finished wind turbine, as well as a limiting factor in the size vs power equation, so Keystone's spiral welding technique could still become a strong lever to move costs. of renewable energy.