Stockyard Wind Farm, recently repowered

While headlines tend to spotlight new builds and breakthrough technologies, a less glamorous, workhorse solution to these challenges may hold the key to faster, more efficient progress: ‘lite repowering.’

Lite repowering, the practice of upgrading or replacing aging wind turbine components, can extend the life of existing projects by as many as 15 years, boost grid efficiency and avoid many of the hurdles that plague greenfield development. As such, it’s a strategic shortcut hiding in plain sight. Research funded by the U.S. Dept. of Energy affirms that wind repowering can significantly increase energy production at existing sites, reduce maintenance costs and extend project life — making it a critical tool in the energy transition.

At first glance, repowering sounds simple: take an older wind farm and swap in new hardware. But most traditional repowering efforts are led by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that typically focus on full-component replacement — blades, gearboxes, nacelles — often requiring proprietary parts that generate substantial waste and lock asset owners into limited, vendor-specific supply chains. This drives up costs, stretches timelines and limits flexibility, as owners become dependent on a single manufacturer for maintenance, upgrades and future replacements.

Such short-term, in-kind refurbishment fixes may improve immediate output, but they fail to consider the bigger picture of how all the pieces of a large-scale wind project interact. Turbine specs, grid interconnection, site layout, landowner agreements, even the weather and wildlife permitting all influence a turbine’s long-term performance. Mastering this takes a unique combination of expertise and agility.

“Everyone knows repowering can boost output. The challenge is doing it right,” said Tim Rosenzweig, CEO of PivotGen, a renewable energy developer based in Chicago. “These projects aren’t simple retrofits. They’re complex, multi-layered undertakings that demand deep expertise across engineering, operations, finance, sourcing, and permitting.”

Companies like PivotGen represent a new generation of smaller renewable energy firms capable of delivering the kind of engineering expertise and retain operational agility needed to truly optimize large-scale repowering projects. The innovation they add to the sector can’t come soon enough.

PivotGen is innovating the repowering process. Rather than replace an entire machine, PivotGen takes a much lighter approach, replacing and refurbishing in a more highly customized way. The company recently repowered eight projects in its Stockyard Wind Portfolio, upgrading 79 turbines to deliver 128.5 MW of clean energy to communities in the Texas Panhandle. And PivotGen did it without scrapping large components that still held meaningful useful life.

The problem with traditional repowers

Rotor pitch bearing exchange at the Stockyard Porterhouse site

Today, tens of thousands of turbines across the United States are entering their second decade of service. OEMs are increasingly walking away from legacy models, creating gaps in parts, support and service continuity. Meanwhile, traditional repowering solutions — often “one size fits all” — can’t fully unlock the remaining value of these aging assets.

Why? Because the OEMs don’t take a systems-first, turbine-by-turbine view. And they can’t adapt as quickly.

Consider what engineers face in a typical repowering project. Many turbines might be dealing with locked rotors, obsolete control systems or gearbox failures. Others suffer from yaw bedplate wear beyond conventional repair limits. Each of these factors affects the fair market value and long-term productivity of the asset — yet most repowering approaches fail to account for them dynamically. It’s certainly easier to scrap it all. But is it smarter?

“Standard repowering often means scrapping components that still have life left,” said Bob Grimley, senior VP of engineering at PivotGen. “It’s inefficient and unnecessarily wasteful.”

It’s also environmentally costly. While towers and nacelles are largely recyclable, the blades — made from fiberglass and carbon fiber composites — are notoriously hard to process. A single turbine blade can take up to 45 cubic-yards of landfill space. In one Minnesota repowering project, most of the 65 blades were simply cut up and buried due to the cost of recycling. Multiply that by the more than 235,000 blades that are expected to be decommissioned by 2050 nationwide, and the scope of the challenge becomes apparent.

Why it matters now

Repowering efforts at Stockyard Porterhouse

More than 45 GW of U.S. wind capacity is already over a decade old. Repowering even a portion of these projects could add the equivalent of 13.5 GW of new capacity — enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes — and nearly double what was installed across all U.S. wind farms in 2023. And this business opportunity hasn’t gone unnoticed.

PivotGen, for example, is so convinced of the business value of repowering in general that earlier this year it launched Repowering-as-a-Service, a business unit dedicated entirely to addressing the complex challenges of repowering aging wind farms.

Jim O. Ludwig, VP of renewables at Integrated Power Services (IPS), said his company has also expanded its capacity to take on large-scale repowering jobs in response to the growing demand. He agreed the traditional whole-machine repowering model needs to evolve.

“We see that our customers are starting to increase their partial repower strategies to mitigate the high cost of replacing an entire nacelle,” he said, adding that this surgical approach is even more relevant in light of ongoing trade tensions. “With tariffs impacting costs on almost every component of a nacelle, [this targeted approach] just makes sense. Even before tariffs, it was sensible to repair, replace or upgrade the items critical to turbine performance. Now, it’s even more logical.”

With owners and operators navigating the impact of shifting tariffs, a process built on iteration offers real, flexible business advantages. And with the Inflation Reduction Act still providing expanded tax incentives for qualified upgrades, the economics are finally aligning with the opportunity.

Customized repowering also offers a workaround to one of the industry’s biggest bottlenecks: interconnection. By leveraging existing land rights, permits, and grid infrastructure, these projects avoid the costly, years-long delays that plague new builds. Changing only what’s critical accelerates schedules and improves ROI.

A surgical, targeted approach

Lite repowering’s method of surgical, site-specific and data-driven repowering offers the industry a unique model for change. Embracing this systems-first mindset will allow companies to evaluate entire wind farms — not just individual components. By combining regulatory fluency, technical expertise and financial modeling, lite repowering can deliver solutions that are both tailored and scalable.

Rather than defaulting to full hardware swaps, lite repowering begins with borescope analysis and sub-component inspection. Some parts are replaced. Others are refurbished. Every decision is evaluated based on fair market value, supply chain conditions and long-term performance.

In many cases, outdated software — not just worn-out hardware — poses the bigger challenge. Obsolete control systems can constrain sourcing options and drag down productivity. Successful practitioners of lite repowering must factor this into their planning to ensure upgrades extend not only turbine life, but also the project’s financial viability.

Real-world results: The Stockyard Project

Take PivotGen’s Stockyard Wind Portfolio: eight projects across the Texas Panhandle with 79 turbines and 128.5 MW of upgraded clean energy.

Instead of following the typical gearbox replacement path, PivotGen conducted subsystem analysis to identify targeted fixes. Locked rotors were repaired. In one case, a yaw bedplate worn beyond repair was replaced not with an OEM part, but with a custom-machined interface — extending the turbine’s life by up to 20 years.

The result? Less waste, less downtime and a more cost-effective outcome for project owners.

Scaling this kind of impact requires strong relationships across the industry and with the communities these projects serve. Ryan Cooper, VP of commercial operations at Panorama Energy Services, partnered with PivotGen on the Stockyard project. He said success at this level comes down to one thing: building the right team.

“[Their approach of] overhauling the existing machine, versus sending a majority of it to a scrap yard, is truly a cutting-edge solution,” Cooper said. “By improving existing systems and engineering out known defects to improve reliability — not rotor diameter — they’re doing something truly innovative.”

Built to evolve

The key to successful repowering isn’t brute-force replacement — it’s iteration and collaboration. By taking an agile, iterative approach developers can move quickly with great expertise but also pivot to updating technical, financial and regulatory variables throughout the project lifecycle. All decisions are optimized for performance and return on investment, while staying in compliance with tax and policy frameworks.

The case for repowering

Repowering isn’t just a maintenance tactic; it’s a strategic lever for accelerating clean energy without the cost, delay, red tape and environmental burden of greenfield projects. Just as important, repowered projects keep delivering for the local communities through continued payments to landowners, good paying local jobs and increased tax revenue. By adopting the precision-first, waste-averse methodology championed by PivotGen and others, repowering becomes a high-impact tool — balancing engineering, finance and sustainability.

It’s not about fixing what’s old. It’s about maximizing what’s already working, addressing the needs of local communities and building a cleaner, smarter energy future on that foundation.

Bryan Reed is Director of Commercial Ops and Strategy at PivotGen, with over 20 years of experience in renewable energy project development and execution. He has led teams at GE Renewable Energy and NYSERDA, with expertise spanning the full lifecycle of wind energy projects from site identification and permitting to construction, operations, and repowering.

Meredyth Crichton is Director of Systems Engineering at PivotGen. A mechanical engineer with over 25 years of experience, she brings deep technical expertise to optimizing the operational efficiency of wind energy projects. She has served as a senior leader in clean energy initiatives at GE Energy and Clemson University’s Dominion Energy Innovation Center.

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Rising in tandem with this growth is an emerging recognition that traditional fossil energy generation can no longer be the only source of most of the world’s energy. Around the globe, individuals, governments and even industry are increasingly calling for more sustainable energy generation. In response, utilities are adding additional renewable generation assets to their portfolios to meet this new need.

Among the many options for renewable energy generation, wind turbines are of particular interest to many utilities. Wind turbines offer one of the most efficient ways to produce renewable energy. However, constructing new turbines can often be costly, complex and time consuming. Long gone are the days when a utility could simply select a flat patch of land and install a new wind asset. Today, increasing regulation makes it difficult to build new turbines in many areas.

To navigate this challenge, utilities are turning to the many existing wind farms already in place. With many legacy assets now underperforming due to age, and others simply dormant, existing installations are ripe for acquisition and reintroduction to the grid by traditional utilities looking to expand their green energy portfolios. In fact, most organizations operating wind turbines are running a combination of both new and legacy assets across their fleets.

However, energy producers value efficiency, and running a wide array of disparate assets across a region, or even across the globe, tends to be inefficient. In such a configuration the team must monitor many assets and manage all their quirks across a complex network of differing control solutions. Utilities pursuing wind assets to bolster their green energy portfolios not only need turbines but also ways to efficiently control those turbines and solve for the challenges aging assets across the fleet will present. Today, most of these companies are turning to common platforms using fit-for-purpose green energy software portfolios that provide centralized supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software and wind turbine condition monitoring systems (CMS).

Variety creates complexity

One of the most difficult elements of operating wind fleets is that any given wind farm rarely operates only one type of turbine. When companies purchase new turbines, they don’t often have the option to standardize every asset. Whether it is a matter of cost savings, topographical requirements or even supply chain issues, most wind farms have many different turbine models from a wide array of different manufacturers.

The key problem with this approach is that different turbines will have different control systems provided by each OEM. In fact, even if every turbine is manufactured by the same company, that is no guarantee that each of the control system versions or types — and, by association, interfaces — will be the same.

The key issue with operating a variety of control systems is that it dramatically increases the complexity of operators’ jobs. If the control systems cannot be interconnected, which is common with systems from different OEMs, operators will need to travel between turbines to access the control systems and make changes. Not only does that waste time, but it also makes operations more complex to standardize and document. Moreover, operators will need to learn multiple control interfaces to be effective and efficient in the field, and they will have to collect data manually, necessitating complex manual calculations to track and trend performance.

Ultimately, no matter how efficient the wind farm’s operators may be, a wide array of disparate control systems will lead to siloed data, which will limit operational excellence.

Data is critical

One of the main reasons utilities acquire existing wind generation assets is to build flexibility into their portfolios to compete in a competitive marketplace. However, acquiring assets is just the start. Truly capturing a competitive advantage also requires efficient, reliable and flexible operations. In turn, unlocking those capabilities requires continuous access to reliable data for optimal operation, predictive maintenance and advanced analytics.

Unfortunately, OEM control systems typically lock much of a turbine’s critical control data out of sight of operators. If operators cannot see this data, even with the best data analysts on staff, they cannot hope to effectively identify the most common failures in wind turbines before it is too late. Moreover, limited access to asset health data makes it difficult to identify the patterns that can isolate weak components and bad actors among a fleet of assets.

Typically, the only way to access most data in a turbine’s OEM control system is to request it from the manufacturer. This method is typically both costly and time consuming, particularly for legacy turbines. Even if operators are willing to pay the cost to gain access to the thousands of data points locked away in the control system, they are unlikely to have real-time access to that data, and therefore will struggle to make the fast decisions necessary to stay competitive.

Condition monitoring delivers data

One of the ways forward-thinking utilities are tackling the power of limited data from their OEM and end-of-life turbine control systems is by adding a CMS to collect and deliver data to a central location. The best modern CMS solutions can collect data from nearly any type of turbine in real-time, delivering ownership of turbine data back to the actual asset owner.

CMS solutions from providers with decades of wind industry expertise can unlock thousands of data points and deliver actionable insights — not just the dense and complex raw data — providing decision support and analysis, without incurring a fee each time.

For example, data from a CMS can provide granular enough detail about the performance of a turbine that a team could potentially allow extra wear and tear when the conditions are right — such as when price per kilowatt-hour is high. Armed with actionable information in real-time, the operations team can adjust control strategy to capitalize on excellent market conditions that offset the potential costs of additional wear, and then shift control back to a traditional strategy when market prices level out. Such flexibility is a key contributor to competitive advantage.

Integration increases operational excellence

To further uplevel their wind production capabilities, many organizations are tying turbine CMSs into fit-for-purpose green energy SCADA software. A green energy SCADA can mix operations and maintenance data to help teams correlate operational data with information received from the CMS to drive better operating decisions.

Such a solution can be particularly useful to manage an array of disparate, aging assets across a fleet. If a turbine that typically runs at 2 MW experiences mechanical problems, a team using a CMS will know much earlier than a team that must conduct asset-by-asset inspections. Having the CMS connected to a green energy SCADA will provide users more control options. For example, it might be possible to use the SCADA to derate the turbine to 1 MW to allow it to keep operating until a planned maintenance outage. While the turbine will not produce to its full capacity, it will still provide significant value over an outage until the problem is solved.

Feedback from a seamlessly integrated CMS and green energy SCADA system can also optimize daily operations, helping teams adjust those operations to extend the life of assets and avoid the added cost of expediting unplanned service. Many teams also use the actionable information they identify in their integrated solution to improve planned outage preparation. A team that knows what needs to be done going into an outage can ensure it has the right parts, people and equipment to do the necessary work correctly the first time.

Data drives advantage

As more utilities expand their portfolios with green energy solutions, they will not only need access to more data, but will also need the tools that provide insight and visibility to make use of that data. A CMS can help a team unlock data that is typically trapped inside the black box of a wind turbine’s OEM control technology. Moreover, when coupled with a fit-for-purpose green energy SCADA, that data can be leveraged to improve operations and maintenance and drive the plant and business decisions necessary to unlock competitive advantage in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

Thomas Andersen is vice president of renewable technologies for Emerson. He has more than 30 years of renewables control and optimization experience, with a keen focus on wind generation. He began his career as an electrical technician with Mita-Teknik, a company known as a pioneer and leader in wind generation control. In 2009, Andersen was promoted to Mita-Teknik’s chief technology officer where he drove the development of state-of-the-art solutions used by wind turbine manufacturers, OEMs and owners and operators all over the world.

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The solution to maximizing their output lies not in the mechanical engineering that first springs to mind, but in the software that controls these massive machines.  These intelligent software solutions offer a more economical path to improved performance, breathing new life into older installations and extending their operational lifespan.

The software revolution

A revolution in wind power efficiency is happening in the realm of software and data analysis. Software development, a crucial aspect of our technological advancement, goes hand-in-hand with hardware performance enhancement, ensuring the optimal functioning of the wind turbine system, especially within controllers and converters.

Recent software breakthroughs are impressive, significantly enhancing the performance and efficiency of wind turbine converters. These developments focus on advanced converter control algorithms and advanced data collection, analysis and storing capabilities, which can bring benefits such as improved grid compliance, predictive and condition-based maintenance, and remote monitoring capabilities.

Advanced control algorithms are at the forefront of these innovations. Modern wind turbine converters utilize these algorithms to optimize power output and ensure seamless integration with the power grid. They adapt in real-time to changing wind conditions and grid requirements, maximizing energy extraction while reducing structural loads on turbine components.

Grid compliance is another crucial aspect, as software updates enable converters to meet evolving grid codes and standards. This adaptability ensures stable integration with power grids across various regions, allowing turbines to maintain optimal performance even under challenging conditions. This will help to play a role as the world’s electricity grids undergo their significant transformation, as they require a 20% faster expansion over the next decade compared to the previous one.

Predictive maintenance and real-time data analysis has revolutionized how operators manage wind farms. Intelligent software systems monitor converter performance continuously, predicting potential issues and scheduling maintenance proactively. This allows operators to visualize performance patterns, identify inefficiencies and implement improvements without delay. This rapid response capability ensures that turbines consistently operate at peak efficiency.

Overall, these software innovations are driving the wind energy sector toward greater efficiency and reliability. As research continues, we can anticipate even more advanced control systems that will further optimize wind turbine performance.

Looking to the future

The future of wind is clearly two-fold, advancing new turbine technologies while optimizing the performance of the existing ones. This will ensure that renewables play a strong part in the future energy mix, secure energy production and availability while supporting more energy efficient landscapes. It will help to stabilize energy costs for people, businesses and governments.

As we continue our journey toward a cleaner energy future, the invisible revolution in wind power software is of critical importance in our ability to find innovative solutions to complex challenges.

Jonas Wahlstroem is CTO, Global Product Group Renewables at ABB Motion based in Switzerland. He has spent more than 25 years at ABB Group, gaining a raft of experience in international business, with the last 5 years within product management, including product development, business development and strategy development and implementation. He has an M.B.A from Swiss Business School.

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