Life cycle assessment of 50 MW wind firms and strategies for impact reduction

The world today is continuously striving toward a carbon neutral clean energy technology. Hence, renewable wind power systems are increasingly receiving the attention of mankind. Energy production with structurally more promising and economically more competitive design is no more the sole criterion while installing new megawatt (MW) range of turbines. Rather important life cycle analysis (LCA) issues like climate change, ozone layer depletion, effect on surrounding environments e.g. ecosystem quality, natural resources and human health emerge as dominant factors from green energy point of view. Hence, the study covers life cycle impact analysis (LCIA) of three wind farms: one onshore horizontal, one offshore horizontal, another vertical axis. It appears that vertical axis wind farm generates per unit electricity with lowest impact followed by horizontal offshore and horizontal onshore farms. The study, henceforward, discovers most adverse impact contributing materials in today's multi megawatt wind turbines and subsequently substitutes copper, the topmost impact contributor, with more eco-friendly aluminum alloys and its corresponding process routes. In this process, it reduces overall life cycle impacts up to 30% for future greener wind farms. In later stages, it compares all major electricity production technologies, viz., oil, diesel, coal, natural gas, wind, solar, biomass, nuclear, hydro plant in a common platform which demonstrates the wind farms performing the best except the hydro-kinetic ones. However, as the study suggests, offshore VAWT farm may even perform better than hydro-kinetic farms because of higher capacity factors in the high sea. Findings from the study can be deployed to harness massive scale green electricity from environmentally more clean and green turbines. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.