Carbon Zero Electricity NZ

Wind energy technology continues to evolve towards larger wind turbine blades, higher power generation, higher towers and incipient growth of offshore wind projects. According to recent report, European countries continue to lead with an installed capacity of 140 gigawatts (GW) of wind power that supplies the network, representing one third of the total global capacity that reached 430 GW, more than double five years ago.

On the other hand, due to the rapid expansion in new facilities, for the first time, China has exceeded the total capacity of the European Union, although not all are connected to the electricity grid.

In 2015, another record was broken with the installation of a 65 MW capacity of wind turbines globally, which represented an increase of 20 percent since 2014. Europe has been adding between 10 and 13 GW of wind capacity annually since 2010. It has made new advances in offshore wind whose installed capacity is likely to advance to 15 GW between the next 4 and 6 years.

Offshore wind turbines

The market for offshore wind, which provides carbon zero electricity NZ still represents a small percentage of total wind deployment. The figures show that between 2010 and 2015 the percentage of installed offshore capacity increased from 1 percent (3.8 GW) to 3 percent (12.2 GW) of the total wind installations. Since 2010, the offshore wind market showed stable annual deployment rates between 0.9 and 2.8 GW.

Installed offshore capacity represented 3 percent (12.2 GW) of the wind installations. Most of the deployment indices showed an increase of around 29 percent from 1.8 GW in 2014 to 2.3 GW in 2015 as a result of the strong offshore market boosted in 2015. In addition, some regions are key leaders when it comes to global offshore wind capacity with close to 90 percent of new projects completed in the world.

In terms of land-based wind energy, the growth rate stands at 10 percent per year, around the global average: between 16 and 9 percent.

There is a trend of higher towers and larger wind turbines. Global technology trends favor larger wind turbine blades, higher power generation and higher towers, allowing a new type of onshore wind turbine to use energy even in areas with medium to low wind speeds.

Rotor blades of wind turbines now have an average diameter of 100 meters, 45 percent more than ten years ago, meaning considerably more energy production.