New momentum through repowering - From 13 to five
It sounds like a magic trick from a magician's bag of tricks: Remove 13 old wind turbines, replace them with five new ones - and produce twice as much clean electricity as before. "This is not witchcraft, but technical progress," says Mora Chladek, the project manager in charge at juwi Energieprojekte GmbH. In so-called "repowering", older windmills are replaced by modern, more powerful and thus higher-yielding turbines. This gives new momentum to the energy turnaround and at the same time ensures that the number of wind turbines does not have to increase immeasurably. At the end of the last century, a total of 13 NEG Micon NM 60 wind turbines, each with a capacity of one megawatt, were put into operation. Since then, they have dutifully produced clean electricity, for the good of the environment but also for the benefit of the approximately 140 limited partners of the operating company BVT Windpark Flomborn/Stetten GmbH & Co. KG. In the meantime, wind turbine technology has made great progress. New turbines are not only larger and more powerful - they are also significantly quieter and thus more environmentally friendly. For this reason, old mills are being dismantled in many places in Rhineland-Palatinate and replaced by modern wind turbines.
"The five new Vestas V112 wind turbines have a total capacity of 15 megawatts and generate twice as much clean energy as the 13 old turbines".
With its annual yield of over 40 million kilowatt hours, around 11,000 households can be completely supplied with electricity. "In addition, this saves 30,000 tons of climate-damaging CO2 year after year compared to the usual energy generation mix in Germany," calculates the juwi project manager.
But it is not only through its performance that the new wind farm sets standards. "Flomborn II also shows in terms of citizen participation what opportunities the energy transition offers today," says Carsten Hoch from the juwi repowering team. In addition to private investors, several local communities of the VG Alzey-Land, united in an institution of public law (AöR), as well as two citizens' energy cooperatives have participated in the joint project. Carsten Hoch: "In this way, citizens become operators of the wind farm and also benefit financially from the expansion of renewable energies. At the same time, a large part of the added value remains in the region."
And all this with significantly reduced risk. After all, the wind conditions are known and comprehensively documented through years of operation of the old plants. On this basis, future yields can be forecast very accurately.
With the dismantling guarantees required for every wind power project, the old turbines could be completely dismantled and recycled. Here, too, wind energy impressively demonstrates its sustainability and cost efficiency.