Integrating wind turbines with highway infrastructures

Abstract

The country of the Netherlands has set targets to increase its renewable energy generation. For onshore wind renewable capacities are required to meet the climate targets. However, achieving additional onshore wind generation is limited by issues related to land availability, zoning and grid congestion. Therefore new locations to install more wind capacity need to be found. Highway infrastructures are a place which offers possibilities to integrate onshore wind turbines at different capacities. For example, micro wind turbines could be structurally integrated with acoustic screen noise barriers which offer a solid foundation and support. While at the MW scale, wind turbines could be installed next to highway fuelling stations to provide electricity and hydrogen for the mobility sector by production locally at the station. This Dissertation aims to investigate two concepts and their nationwide implementation in the country of the Netherlands: 1. Micro wind turbines integrated in highway structures for electricity production 2. MW wind turbines integrated at fuelling stations for hydrogen production. The research is focussed on the main question: “What is the technical and economic potential of integrating wind turbines with highway infrastructures?”. To answer this question for both concepts the following activities were conducted. Initially, wind tunnel and field experimental campaigns are planned and executed to understand the wind resource potential and the performance for the concept of micro wind turbines on top of noise barriers along with a technical and economic analysis. It was understood that to determine the potential for the Netherlands, a nationwide analysis using GIS datasets would be needed. Therefore, GIS analyses were then conducted by using the results from the experimental campaigns and applied for all noise barriers in the Netherlands. Finally, the GIS analysis was further expanded to the second concept of MW scale wind turbines collocated with fuelling stations.