Survey of Sweden’s installed wind turbine capacity and the country’s ability to handle future turbine decommissioning waste material

Abstract: The global market for wind energy is expanding rapidly, and in the last decade, Sweden has constructed thousands of wind turbines. The high installation pace suggests that a similarly rapid decommissioning rate is to be anticipated in the near future, notwithstanding the small number of turbines that have been retired thus far. There will be serious questions about the viability of wind power as a clean energy option if the decommissioned material by unfunctional turbines is not managed in a proper manner. The purpose of this research is to provide the distribution of Swedish installed wind turbine with the aspect of age, brand & model, hub height & rotor diameter, and nameplate capacity and also a reliable estimate of the total amount of decommissioned material that will be produced by wind turbines in Sweden over the next two decades. The results will represent to current characteristic of an industry to benefit the operation & maintenance activity and wind industry market research. Moreover, this will also help the waste management sector prepare for the inevitable increase in decommissioned material. The estimates are based on the installation dates, rotor diameter and other pertinent data included in vbk.lansstyrelsen.se, a Swedish national wind turbine map service. Applying the available data set with logarithmic function of rotor diameter and material fraction technique, the quantity of steel, iron, copper,aluminium, blade material, and electronics were generated. The material of each turbine is considered to be dismantled as wastes at 20 years after the installation date due to the industry average and comparison with empirical facts. As the results, the distributions show that most of Swedish wind turbines were installed between 2007 and 2016 and the most popular rated capacity ranged between 2 MW to 3 MW. Furthermore, the biggest market share belonged to Vestas, Enercon, and Siemens, respectively. The forecasted numbers reveal a large increase in decommissioned material weights year by year, and the blade material end-of-life management is the key concern when comparing the estimated number to Sweden's waste management capacity. Limitations associated with the suggested methodology and adopting data set are presented and discussed.