Innovation is key for the wind energy sector. And given the climate change reality we live in, it has never been so urgent to optimize clean energy generation to advance in the energetic transition as needed. For the wind energy industry, it has taken us 40 years to reach one terawatt of wind turbine installations by 2023. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), we need to reach three terawatts by 2030 to achieve Net Zero. An irregular and delayed transition would leave energy markets and industry vulnerable to volatile fossil fuel supplies.
Latin America has a unique opportunity to position itself in this new context and gain global relevance in the energy transition to revolutionize our industries and generate socioeconomic value with job creation, deep decarbonization and transformation of industrial sectors.
Our region is a key player in renewable energy on the international scene, especially due to the great wind potential and the competitive levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) in the world. But relying on our resources is not enough since we’re competing for the same pool of international investments. The success of the energy transition in LATAM depends on a combination of having a well-developed local supply chain, summed up to a strong technologically innovative capacity to guarantee the optimization of turbines for the entire market.
If you look at the last two decades in the wind industry, innovation was tied up to make turbines bigger. That was a very successful concept that put the wind industry on its feet, making it more competitive than fossil fuels. However, we cannot associate innovation only with creating bigger turbines anymore. In fact, rapidly introducing new, larger products has proven to challenge the industry’s ability to develop reliable, optimized, and high-quality turbines for the +20 years lifetime they shall endure, and it hinders the ability to establish sustainable and efficient supply chains needed to keep these wind turbines in operation. This has generated an interesting effect for the market, which has been dedicating its efforts and investments to scaling production as part of the global commitment to curbing climate change. Vestas is committed to promoting a positive wheel of transformation and technological development and has been focusing on bringing not only wind turbines that promote a higher level of energy production but also that come with proven technology and a strong base of suppliers regionally and globally.
"But relying on our resources is not enough since we’re competing for the same pool of international investments."
From another perspective, we can also observe that new turbine models have been implemented without taking into consideration the consequences in the wider value chain with wind farm construction and operations, challenging the supply chain to adapt itself to the new reality and deal with situations such as the shortage of larger cranes for installing multi-mega turbines. Suppliers of this equipment were unable to follow the same technological pace as wind turbine manufacturers. The few of them that could do it resulted in a price increase, given the limited supply. Consequently, this effect impacted the profitability of the customers' business. To mitigate these impacts during the operations and maintenance phase of projects, our services team has been investing efforts in the development of innovative solutions in terms of up-tower repairs (rather than a full component exchange) as well as crane-less main component exchange solutions, where we replace the need of a main crane by a special tool that is coupled in the wind turbine.
Due to the challenges that some wind turbine manufacturers faced, such as profitability, inflation, high transport costs, quality issues and many others, some companies decided to finish and/or suspend their operations in our region to prioritize other markets. Fortunately, as Vestas, we have invested locally in technology, innovation, and value chain development, which allows us to continue to partner with our customers in the deployment of renewable energy. One good example of our commitment to our customers is a successful story where we have ensured the operation of a turbine produced by another manufacturer when its components had become obsolescent: after a thorough study and thanks to the supply chain that we have strengthened across the globe, we were able to replace the wind turbine blades and increase the level of performance of the equipment compared to the indicators collected before its shutdown.
We are committed to sustainable advancement, based on proven technologies and high reliability, as well as service support focused on safety and quality, verifying re-manufacturing solutions (our known renovated components) as well as supporting our customers in finding financial and operational efficiencies.
These are important experiences that reinforce the value of a business guided by innovation to adapt the chain and prepare it to meet the accelerated pace that the market will demand to transform the energy matrix and decarbonize the industry.
