Wind Power

Wind energy power generation has experienced an impressive annual growth during the last decade and represents today the highest amount of the electricity produced by all renewable resources if hydroelectric power is excluded. Wind energy can be considered at present a mature technology with production costs, which reach grid parity, under favourable conditions and high capacity factors. In this chapter, we make a review of the future technology trends, as for example the construction of very large wind turbines (5-10 MW) with hub heights around 150 m, and therefore being able to access to much faster winds than those close to ground. However, the main development in wind energy technologies is related to the deployment of off-shore wind farms, since offshore wind speeds are usually higher than those on land, and especially more continuous in time. Other interesting future trends are related to the development of miniturbines to be placed in urban areas, as for example parks, and also in buildings. Finally, we would like to remark that significant efforts are being dedicated to wind resource assessment in order to increase forecasting precision. © Springer-Verlag London 2013.