Wind Onshore

Onshore wind power is a mature technology, deployed worldwide. Asia, Europe and the United States show the highest total capacity. Wind turbines have grown significantly over the past decades, resulting in increased yield and at the same time cost reductions. The larger the diameter of a wind turbine rotor, the larger the swept area, which increases quadratically with the length of a blade. This makes upscaling both technically and economically attractive. Usually, legal restrictions to tip height are in place, limiting the size of wind turbines. In order to benefit from further economies of scale, turbines are combined in wind parks. The turbine blades are driving a hub attached to an electric generator, located in the nacelle. The power is fed into the grid. Variability of the wind regime makes that the electricity supply capacity varies as well, from 0 MW in low wind or extremely stormy periods, up to maximum capacity at wind speeds within the design window. The yield of wind turbines strongly depends on the average annual wind conditions. Different wind classes require different turbine types. In this series of factsheets however, wind turbine characteristics do not vary in costs, but the main variable used is the yield, which depends on the regional wind speed. Six wind speed regions are defined for the Netherlands. The main information source for current onshore wind data is a meta study, performed in the Dutch subsidy scheme SDE++ (PBL 2021b). Future projections are based on combining projections from other reports with the SDE++ parameters.

All information in the datasheets is also available in ESDL (Energy System Discription Language). You can find them in the Energy Data Repository (EDR).