The first recyclable blades of Siemens Gamesa are spinning on a wind turbine at the Kaskasi nautical wind farm in Germany. It’s the first commercial installation of recyclable wind turbine technology.
The wind engineering giant which has Spanish/German origin, calls its recyclable blade technology RecyclableBlade. Wind turbine blades are made of several materials implanted in resin. Siemens Gamesa explains:
“Separating the resin, fiberglass, and wood, among others, is achieved through using a mild acid solution. The materials can then go into the circular economy, creating new products like suitcases or flat-screen casings without the need to call on more raw resources.”
The RecyclableBlade technology was first introduced in Aalborg, Denmark, and the blades were produced in Hull in the UK (pictured above). The nacelles were manufactured and installed in Cuxhaven, Germany. Siemens Gamesa has an aim to produce all of its wind turbine blades entirely recyclable by 2030 and all of its wind turbines all recyclable by 2040.
Marc Becker, CEO of the Siemens Gamesa Offshore Business Unit, stated:
“We’ve brought the Siemens Gamesa RecyclableBlade technology to market in only 10 months: from launch in September 2021 to installation at RWE’s Kaskasi project in July 2022. This is impressive and underlines the pace at which we all need to move to provide enough generating capacity to combat the global climate emergency.”
The 342 megawatts (MW) Kaskasi nautical wind farm is owned by RWE, a German energy firm. It is situated 35 km or 21.7 miles north of the island of Helgoland in the German North Sea.
Siemens Gamesa doesn’t specify how many of the nautical wind farm’s 38 SG 8.0-167 DD wind turbines will attribute the RecyclableBlade; it just states that “a number of turbines” will be recyclable. Those turbines that do feature them will have “handcrafted Siemens Gamesa B81 RecyclableBlades, each with a length of 81 meters [266 feet].”
