The overall market for small and medium wind turbines (SMWTs) is growing as a result of feed-in tariff policies in the United Kingdom and growing global demand for distributed generation. The U.K. market boomed over the past 2 years and is the leading market worldwide. China and Italy remain important markets while the U.S. SMWT market has been limited due to a reduction in state-level incentives and competition from solar PV systems that have declined in price dramatically. Momentum is growing, however, around the wind lease model that has enabled the distributed solar PV market to scale. This makes interesting news especially since the news of a new micro-turbine that looks like a tree and fits into urban environments and generates power from wind speeds as low as 4.4 mph.
Although the market for modern SMWTs has existed for 30 years, there are many signs that the industry is maturing, including certification requirements, the hundreds of manufacturers located around the world, expanding dealer networks, and a growing number of state- and federal-level industry associations. In addition, an increasing number of applications are being enabled by the interest and investment in microgrids and hybrid systems that that integrate small wind with solar PV and diesel generators, among other renewable distributed energy generation technologies (RDEG). According to Navigant Research, global annual installations of SMWTs are expected to grow from an estimated 254.9 MW in 2014 to 587.7 MW in 2023. Get more information at https://www.navigantresearch.com/research/small-and-medium-wind-power
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