Useful resource restoration agency EMR writes
As asset homeowners, power corporations and policymakers within the UK power market are busy deliberating over how we ship the bold Clear Energy 2030 (CP30) targets, together with a doubling of UK onshore wind capability by 2030, ‘repowering’ has emerged as a vital a part of the answer.
Repowering wind generators means upgrading or changing older wind generators with new know-how to extend their effectivity, reliability, and power output. It could actually contain changing key parts resembling blades, gearboxes, and mills, or eradicating older generators completely and putting in fashionable, higher-capacity fashions.
We all know that assembly these Clear Energy targets received’t be simple. Latest trade research have highlighted vital challenges in rolling out new onshore wind functionality, ensuing from planning and allowing delays, grid connection queues, and rising mission prices (iii).
Renewables Obligation Scheme
Moreover, regardless of the rising working prices that include age, the UK’s oldest (and smallest) belongings proceed to be financially enticing to run. That is each on account of funds from the excessive wholesale electrical energy value and the Renewables Obligation (RO) scheme. The RO scheme is a UK authorities coverage mechanism, arrange simply after the flip of the millennium, that incentivises the technology of electrical energy from renewables.
Nevertheless, early entrants to the RO will see their funds ending in 2027. Because of this the primary wind farms to be erected are actually going through a call level about their future monetary viability.
Hundreds of generators might find yourself being decommissioned, simply as these bold targets kick in. Trade our bodies estimate that, and not using a deliverable plan for alternative, as a lot as 9GW of the UK’s complete onshore wind capability might be misplaced by 2040 as older wind farms attain the top of their viable working lives (iii).
As a substitute of being a cliff edge, the ending of the RO ought to be the catalyst for a strategic and coordinated marketing campaign to maximise the advantages of repowering. There have been latest requires the UK Authorities’s new publicly owned power firm, Nice British Power, to accumulate ageing belongings at a reduced fee and reap the advantages of repowering them (iv). The Institute for Public Coverage Analysis calculates that such a transfer – alongside the funding in inexperienced power already promised on the final election – might ship as much as 5% of the UK’s power wants by the early 2030s, making a tangible, well timed and really optimistic distinction to customers’ payments.
Early wind farms have been generally situated in a number of the greatest areas for wind power, so focussing repowering efforts right here would maximise affect. In truth, information from Europe reveals that changing decades-old belongings with the most recent know-how can cut back the variety of generators in a wind farm by 1 / 4, whereas tripling electrical energy manufacturing – accelerating the transition to extra renewables at a decrease price (v).
Round financial system
A nationwide marketing campaign of renewal additionally must be supported by a UK-based round financial system answer to make decommissioned wind generators accessible for reuse, remanufacturing and recycling. At EMR, we’ve been working laborious to ship simply such a round financial system – primarily based at our Wind Turbine Processing Centre in Glasgow.
By effectively dismantling and rigorously testing every asset that arrives on web site, EMR groups handle the sources in probably the most environment friendly approach – whether or not that be by reusing components or recycling supplies for the subsequent technology of generators.
EMR has additionally been working with HyProMag, the Offshore Renewable Power (ORE) Catapult, Magnomatics, and College of Birmingham to assist ship a scaled-up round provide chain for the rare-earth metals (together with neodymium or NdFeB magnets) discovered within the motors of bigger belongings.
Having a sustainable round provide chain for decommissioned wind generators, and policymakers who again the transition to inexperienced power straight, places the UK in a terrific place to make repowering each sustainable and reasonably priced for all.
At EMR, we’re proud that our experience, funding, and innovation lies on the coronary heart of this chance. And we’re solely simply getting began.
Notes
(i) Regen (2025) Investability and Scottish wind, https://www.regen.co.uk/publications/investability-and-scottish-wind/
(ii) Biggar Economics (2024) Onshore wind finance, https://biggareconomics.co.uk/category/renewables/onshore-wind-finance
(iii) Renewable UK, Scottish Renewables, and Power UK (2023) Repowering and onshore wind, https://www.energy-uk.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Repowering_Onshore_Wind.pdf
(iv) The Institute For Public Coverage Analysis (2025) 2030 and past: Nice British Power’s position within the inexperienced transition, https://www.ippr.org/articles/2030-and-beyond
(V) Wind Europe (2024) Europe not but reaping the advantages of repowering outdated wind farms, https://windeurope.org/newsroom/press-releases/europe-not-yet-reaping-the-benefits-of-repowering-old-wind-farms/
