Optimisation of multi-rotor wind turbines combined with advanced design techniques to enable lower environmental impacts and reduced cost of energy.

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As illustrated by Vestas' V236 - 15 MW turbine, the driving economics of wind turbines have led to gigantic blades made of high-performance materials such as thermosets glass and carbon fibre reinforced polymers (FRP). However, there currently exists no viable process to recycle thermoset FRP blades without degradation of material properties. Hence, blades often end their life in landfills or are incinerated; undesirable scenarios resulting in significant Environmental Impacts (EIs) and loss of material capital [1]. This issue is further exacerbated by the fact that the manufacture of carbon fibres is energy intensive and has substantial Global Warming Potential (GWP ), i.e. more than 10 times that of glass [2]. This lack of sustainability and circularity is a thorny problem which the wind industry and academia are trying to solve using thermoplastic and vitrimer resins to enable, in theory, fully recyclable blades [1]. Even if promising, these technologies are still in development and many technical and practical questions remain regarding, for instance, the quality of the recyclate; how to separate complex blades into their constituents; and the EIs of these recycling processes. More importantly, replacing one resin system by another doesn't fundamentally alter the wind turbine design and its scaling laws, meaning that blades will continue to require extensive amounts of carbon fibre and other raw materials.