Renewable Energy: Wind Farm Perspectives – the Case of Africa
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Renewable Energy: Wind Farm Perspectives – The Case of Africa Yohannes Yihdego1, Hilmi S. Salem2*, and Musa Yahaya Pudza3 1Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation (SMEC), Sydney, New South Wales 2060, Australia 2Sustainable Development Research Institute, Bethlehem, West Bank, Palestine (Occupied) 3Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia Received October 31, 2017; Accepted December 18, 2017 Abstract: This paper is on the push and choice for a greener and environmentally sustainable energy, particularly wind energy. A single wind turbine produces a limited amount of carbon emissions throughout its lifecycle. By taking a broader view, wind energy farms (or wind farms) have collectively a greater impact upon the environment and economy. Recent research on wind farms tends to focus on energy-generated modelling for the cushioning and mitigation of the climate-change malady, hence to enable accurate prediction of power generation. This paper presents an approach to wind energy, with respect to: (i) carbon emissions and intensity; (ii) potential energy production; (iii) return on economic investment; and (iv) payback-time from an early design perspective. The overall contribution of this work is to develop an approach to enable the selection of “greener” options represented in renewable energy sources, particularly the wind energy, with the focus on economic feasibility assessment and environmental impacts. This study represents, to top-management, industrialists (such as wind-turbines’ manufacturers), environmentalists, and engineers, as well as to wind-energy services’ providers, research scientists, and policy- and decision-makers, an assessment of the choices and options of wind-energy provision and in investing in its industry and development, as a clean and sustainable technology to generate electric power. In addition, the potential of using wind energy and other kinds of renewable energy sources for electric power generation is investigated in this study, with respect to the Continent of Africa, as a “case study”, in terms of opportunities and challenges. Keywords: Renewable Energy; Wind Farms; Wind Turbines; Electric Power; Resilience; Life Cycle Assessment (LCA); Environmental Impacts; Capacity Factor; Economic Feasibility Assessment; Continent of Africa *Corresponding author: [email protected] DOI: 10.7569/JSEE.2017.629521 J. Sustainable Energy Eng., Vol. 5, No. 4, December 2017 281 Yohannes Yihdego et al.: Renewable Energy: Wind Farm Perspectives – The Case of Africa 1 Introduction Wind power captures the natural wind in atmosphere and converts it into mechan- ical energy then electricity. People started using wind power centuries ago with windmills for water pumping, grain grounding, and other activities as well, like powering equipments for daily needs. Nowadays, wind turbines are technical and advanced version of windmills. Electricity, the lifeblood of industrial society, powers an increasing variety of human activities. In spite of measures to improve energy efficiency, global demand for electrical power will likely continue to grow in decades to come. While electricity, in itself, is a clean and convenient energy carrier, its production is laden with environmental, social, political, geographical, geopolitical, and other kinds of problems. This calls for a radical transformation from fossil and nuclear to renewable sources of electrical power, such as that gen- erated from wind farms, as being considered an environmentally friendly source of green (clean) energy (see Table 1). Recent technologies in wind turbines harness wind’s kinetic energy and con- vert it into electricity. Most wind turbines have three blades and sit atop a steel tubular tower, and they range in size from 24.4 m tall turbines that can power a single home to utility-scale turbines that power hundreds of homes. Wind is a type of renewable energy, and there are three major types of wind power, which are: 1) Utility-scale wind turbines: They are larger than 100 kilowatts (kW) developed with electricity delivered to the power grid and distributed to the end user by elec- tric utilities or power system operators; 2) Distributed or “small” wind turbines: They use turbines of 100 kW or smaller to directly power a home, farm, or small business as a primary use; and 3) Offshore wind turbines: They are erected in bod- ies of water around the world, but not yet in other places, such as Africa. 2 Literature Review on Wind Turbines, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and Environmental Impacts This literature review (see Table 2) is focused on manufacturing energy require- ments and cost of building wind turbines. It is found that many researchers have used Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as their assessment technique in their approach. The manufacturing phase is a very crucial phase in the life cycle of the wind tur- bines, because it yields the biggest environmental impacts. This is particularly due to the type of electricity used. The more sustainable the source of electricity used in the manufacturing phase of the wind turbines, the less the environmental impacts of the wind turbines. Measures of energy balance may also be used as a performance indicator to benchmark technologies, to argue for one or the other. This rests on an assump- tion that energy efficiency is important, either due to limited availability of energy resources or some specific energy carriers, or due to the fact that all energy conversion carries environmental and social costs (Alhmoud and Wang 2017; DOI: 10.7569/JSEE.2017.629521 282 J. Sustainable Energy Eng., Vol. 5, No. 4, December 2017 Yohannes Yihdego et al.: Renewable Energy: Wind Farm Perspectives – The Case of Africa J. Sustainable Energy Eng. J. SustainableEnergy Table 1 Wind energy in numbers (Modified after GWEC 2017). Item Value Jobs created by the global wind industry at the end of 2016. 1,155,000 Share of global electricity supplied by wind power in 2015. 3.7% Record number of wind power (in gigawatt “GW”) installed in 2016. 55.6 , Vol. , Vol. Total installed global capacity of wind power (in GW) at the end of 2016. 486.8 5 Amount of CO2 emissions (in million tonnes) globally avoided in 2016, using wind power. > 637 , No. Amount of avoided CO2 emissions (in million tonnes) by wind power each year in Brazil. » 5.5 4 , December 2017 Number of average European Union’s (EU) households that one-6 MW offshore turbine can power. 5,500 Number of homes powered by wind energy in Spain. 10,000,000 Share of all the electricity used by South Australians in June 2016, generated by wind power, which provided, 49% on occasions during the month, all the State’s electricity needs. Number of wind turbines spinning around the world at the end of 2016. 341,320 Number of wind turbines in USA at the end of 2016. 52,343 Number of offshore wind turbines in Europe at the end of 2016. 3,589 Number of wind turbines up and running in China at the end of 2016, forming approximately 31% of the 104,934 world’s wind turbines. DOI: 10.7569/JSEE.2017.629521 China’s share of global wind installations in 2016. 42.8% Share of Denmark’s electricity consumption covered by wind energy in 2016. (The Danish Government aims to 37.6% get 50% of its electricity from wind by 2020 and 100% from renewable energy by 2050). EU’s current wind power capacity coverage of the EU’s electricity consumption in an average wind energy 10.4% year. Amount of offshore wind power (in GW) installed globally at the end of 2016. 14,384 (Continued) 283 Yohannes Yihdego et al.: Renewable Energy: Wind Farm Perspectives – The Case of Africa 284 DOI: Table 1 Cont. 10.7569/JSEE.2017.629521 Item Value J. Sustainable Energy Eng. J. SustainableEnergy Time (in months) that a wind turbine takes to recoup the energy that goes into producing, operating, and 3–6 recycling the wind turbine after its 20 to 25-year lifetime. Amount of subsidies (in USD) given to all renewable energy technologies, versus the 6-7 USD subsidies given 1 to fossil fuels. Share of wind power installed in Europe in 2016, accounting the highest of the total 2016-power capacity 51% installations in Europe in 2016. , Vol. , Vol. Money earned (in USD per year) by a farmer from Iowa (USA), using one tenth of a hectare for a wind turbine, 10,000 5 compared to about USD 300, using the same area to grow corn for ethanol. , No. Cost of integrating large, conventional power plants onto the power system in Texas (USA) is more than 17 > 17 4 , times larger than the cost of reliably integrating wind energy. December 2017 Power capacity (in MW) of the largest wind turbine in the world is the Vestas turbine (in Australia), with a 8 rotor diameter of 164 meters. World’s longest wind turbine blade (in meters) is the LM Wind Power’s blade (Denmark). 88.4 Number of parts a wind turbine has. 8,000 Amount of megawatts (MW) in the first large commercial offshore project outside of Europe – the Shanghai 102 Donghai Bridge offshore project, China. Share of EU citizens who are in favor of wind power, according to a 2011-poll. 89% Time (in months) needed to build a wind-energy farm: A 10-MW wind farm can easily be built in 2 months. A 2, 6,16, arger 50-MW wind farm can be built in 6 months. The Butendiek 288-MW offshore wind farm (Germany) respectively with 80 turbines in the North Sea was built in just 16 months. Number of households supplied with electricity by the Butendiek 288-MW offshore wind farm (Germany). 370,000 Number of people expected to be employed by the wind industry in the EU by 2020. 520,000 Number of megawatts (MW) of wind power installed in Brazil in 2016.