Page - 39 - in Clean Water Using Solar and Wind - Outside the Power Grid

The renewable energy revolution 39 99 92 80 7.1 5.7 30 2.0 1.9 1.4 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 EU Asia East Asia South-East Asia and Pacific South and Central Asia North America Latin America and Caribbean Africa Middle East and North Africa Figure 3.5 Solar data on installed capacity (GW) in different regions of the world at the end of 2015. Asia is shown both as a total and split into three major regions. Data source IEA (2016a). 3.6 WIND POWER GLOBAL EXPANSION Global wind generation capacity at the end of 2015 reached 435 GW, which is around 7% of the world generation capacity (WEC 2016, Chapter 10). In just one year, 2015, the growth rate was more than 17%. Wind power capacity is estimated to increase to 977 GW by 2030. Most of the wind power (905 GW) will be onshore while 72 GW is expected to be offshore (ibid.). Most of the wind power capacity in 2015, 422 GW, is from large onshore wind units, where the average machine size is 2 MW. Off- shore wind, around 12 GW, is generated from 4,000 machines with an average size of 3 MW. Small onshore wind capacity makes a very minor contribution, less than 1 GW. The 800,000 small turbines produce an average of 1.25 kW (ibid.). Naturally, wind resources vary between regions. According to IRENA (2016d) the northern, eastern and southern regions of Africa have excellent wind resources. This, however, is not reflected by the amount of installed wind turbine energy in these countries, as illustrated in Figure 3.6. The potential for harvesting wind energy ought to be enormous. The challenge is not the geographical conditions but the financial opportunities. Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/520710/wio9781780409443.pdf by IWA Publishing user