RWE is installing recyclable rotor blades on an industrial scale at its Sofia offshore wind farm off the British East coast, in what the company says is a UK first. The multinational energy company announced in late August that half of the 150 blades ordered from Siemens Gamesa have already been fitted at the 1.4 GW project, which is currently under construction on the Dogger Bank in the central North Sea.
The blades are made using an innovative resin that allows the high-strength composite materials to be separated at the end of their operational life. They can subsequently be recycled into products such as vehicle components, bicycle helmets and suitcases, according to the energy company.
The innovation addresses one of the wind power sector’s pressing challenges. While up to 90 per cent of a wind power plant's mass consisting of materials such as steel, cables and concrete can be recycled using established processes, rotor blades remain, in the words of industry association Wind Europe, "one of the last hurdles" on the road to full recyclability. The association forecasts that by 2030 around 14,000 blades will reach end-of-life in Europe, amounting to some 40,000 to 60,000 tonnes of waste. The 150 recyclable blades for the Sofia project, by comparison, will weigh in at around 5,200 tonnes.
The Sofia wind farm is being built in the North Sea, around 195 km off the English coast on the Dogger Bank. With a planned installed capacity of 1.4 GW, it is among the largest offshore projects in RWE’s global portfolio. Once commissioned next year, it is expected to generate enough renewable electricity to power more than 1.2 million British households.
The deployment of recyclable rotor blades in the Sofia wind farm builds on RWE’s experience with the installation of Siemens Gamesa's recyclable blades at its Kaskasi offshore wind farm, where the technology was deployed on three turbines in 2022, a year after it was first unveiled.
The Sofia project marks the first large-scale commercial deployment of Siemen's Gamesa's "RecycleBlade" technology, with 150 blades to be installed on 50 of the wind farm’s 100 turbines. Initially, only 44 turbines were to employ the technology due to limited availability of the specialist resin used to manufacture the blades.
