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There are two main ways to adapt wind turbines to low and medium wind speed areas:

1. Increase the blade length and use an optimized aerofoil profile.


2. Increase the height of the nacelle from the common 70-90m to ~130-140m.
The first method is also used nowadays (in combination with control adjustments) to increase the
yield of excising wind turbines (with only minor changes to the wind turbine itself). Increasing the
tower height is a bit more challenging. For a 140m nacelle wind turbine the bottom diameter of a
steel tower is too big for road transport. Therefore, several companies are using concrete towers to
increase the wind turbines height. Enercon and Gamesa have their own concrete tower design and
ATS BV from the Nederlands produces a hybrid tower of concrete and steel.
In most of Europe the best wind sites are already taken so you would expect the market to
concentrate on medium and low wind sites. However, since it is relatively hard nowadays to set up
new wind farms, I think that most developers will concentrate the next few years on retrofitting and
repowering of existing wind farms (replacing old components or complete turbines with new more
efficient and reliable components and turbines).
India and Korea are going to be markets for low and medium wind sites in the coming years.

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