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Wind repowering is one bright point of light for the US wind industry, which is facing uncertain times as the incoming Trump administration takes the reins of national energy policy. Instead of trying to build new wind farms from scratch, the repowering field re-uses sites with existing turbines, thus avoiding the political battles bedeviling new wind developments.
The Power Of Wind Repowering
Wind repowering can take many forms. Some projects preserve the turbine tower and only replace the turbine, the blades, or both. Some replace the entire turbine from the foundation on up, and others involve recasting the wind farm to include fewer turbines. The common thread is that a repowering project increases the capacity of an existing wind site.
One interesting example to cross the CleanTechnica radar is a project in Pennsylvania that recast an existing 35 turbine, 70 megawatt wind farm into a 33 turbine, 73 megawatt array. The new turbines that are engineered to optimize low wind speeds at the site, accounting for the increased capacity with two fewer turbines.
Last summer the California firm Clearway Energy Group described a repowering project under way at its Cedro Hill wind farm in Webb County, Texas. The site was commissioned in 2010 with a capacity of 150 megawatts. The repower will ad another 10 megawatts. “Upon completion, the repower will add another fifteen years to the project’s operating life and extend property taxes and landowner payments to Webb County by $27 million,” the company noted
An even more striking example comes from Wyoming, where a repowering project cut the number of vintage 1990’s-era turbines at a wind farm from 68 down to just 13, while increasing total output by 60%.
On the manufacturing side, GE Vernova is taking full advantage of the wind repowering movement. Last week the company noted that it took repowering orders for new nacelles and drive trains totaling more than 1 gigawatt in 2024, manufactured at its facility in Pensacola, Florida.
“The technical benefits of repowering are clear,” GE Vernova emphasizes. “Repowering increases the size, output, and longevity of existing turbines to capture more reliable renewable energy for a longer period of time.”
New All-In-One Package Takes The Guesswork Out Of Wind Repowering
Another US firm active in the repowering field is the Chicago-based startup PivotGen. The company quickly established a footprint in new-build wind and solar projects after launching just three years ago, and last week it added a soup-to-nuts wind repowering service to its core business.
“PivotGen offers a unique and proprietary process of leveraging financial, technical, and operational resources to offer a repowering solution customized down to the site, and at times turbine and component level,” PivotGen explains.
“Repowering is complex and highly variable from project to project; we know this with the team having repowered over 2GW of wind projects,” the company’s CEO and co-founder Tim Rosenzweig emphasizes, taking note of the company’s extensive experience in the wind repowering field.
They have their work cut out for them PivotGen calculates that onshore wind projects in the US totaling more than 50 gigawatts in capacity are at least 10 years old, making them potential opportunities for repowering.
The Repowering Difference
Repowering is more than just a matter of squeezing additional clean kilowatts out of the same site. As noted by PivotGen, an aging wind farm is a less efficient one, and that has a knock-on effect on grid operations. “In addition to underproducing their potential, age-related declines can reduce grid reliability and decrease returns to investors, while also underutilizing existing interconnection agreements,” PivotGen notes.
The company also draws attention to the ballooning US interconnection queue, as newly completed projects across the country wait their turn to start sending power to the grid. The wait can last for years. According to PivotGen’s figures, the queue now totals 2 terawatts’ worth of renewable energy projects. Meanwhile, older wind farms are already sitting on baked-in but under-used interconnections.
PivotGen points out that older wind farms already have substations and transmission lines at hand, eliminating the potential for delays over costs and permits for new interconnection infrastructure.
“Repowering offers an efficient, rapid and cost-effective way to ensure existing wind power sites continue to produce at maximum capacity, ensuring uninterrupted power to accommodate this growing power demand,” PivotGen emphasizes, referring to the surging data center industry.
Onwards And Upwards For The US Wind Industry
It’s no secret that incoming President Trump hates wind turbines, an attitude that has already set nerves jittering in the offshore wind industry. That’s understandable considering that offshore wind leases that come under the administrative wing of the federal government, through the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management at the Department of the Interior.
In contrast, onshore wind farms are located mainly on private lands. State and county-level regulatory roadblocks are increasing, but for the most part they cover new wind farm proposals. Wind repowering projects have largely escaped notice, at least so far.
That could change if the opposition catches on to the substantial potential for repowering to increase the nation’s installed wind energy capacity through repowering.
In January of 2024 the Canadian firm Enervus Intelligence Research ran the numbers and calculated that the amount of wind capacity undergoing a repower in the US already matched the capacity of new wind farms under construction, with each totaling 7 gigawatts over the upcoming year.
Along with the interconnection benefits noted by PivotGen, Enervus also pointed out that repowering projects can take advantage of any remaining period left on an existing power purchase agreement.
“In this environment of rising costs, a wind repower has significant upside over a new build and developers are starting to take notice,” explains Enervus VP Scott Wilmot. “Repowering can often be done under existing premium-priced power purchase agreements (PPAs) that have remaining term.”
“More developers are opting to repower instead of building new wind plants in an effort to reduce capex and operations and maintenance costs, and boost power production,” he added.
Based on a calculation of the optimal circumstances for a wind repowering project, the firm came up with a list of 261 potential targets for a total of almost 21 gigawatts.
The upcoming four years should be very interesting ones for the US wind industry…
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Photo (cropped): Wind repowering projects can skim over the obstacles and pitfalls that bedevil new wind farm proposals, adding significant new capacity to the US renewable energy profile (courtesy of GE Vernova).
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