New wind turbine certification process now in place

Developed and driven by a range of industry stakeholders including Vestas, the new certification system creates a clearer, more harmonised, and less costly process to certify wind turbines and other renewable energy equipment. Customers and official bodies require certifications in almost all markets, and with the increasingly broad adoption of the new IECRE certificates, customers will be able to bring wind power projects online more quickly and less expensively.

Harmonising certificates across multiple markets will reduce the costly and time-consuming need to repeat tests as well as create greater clarity for end-users on what exactly is being certified. Industry stakeholders including equipment manufacturers, power producers, insurance companies, test laboratories and certifying bodies have led the effort to create the first stakeholder-driven set of certification rules. The IECRE certificates have now been approved for use in many of the world’s largest wind power markets, including China, Germany, the United States, and elsewhere.

Vestas’ Chief Technology Officer Anders Vedel notes, “What is unique about the IECRE system is that end-users, mainly our customers, together with equipment manufacturers and other stakeholders have substantially contributed to defining the new standards against which wind turbines are evaluated. Vestas began work in 2012 with other stakeholder to create such a system, so we are especially pleased that the first certificate has been issued for a Vestas turbine”.

The first wind turbine certificate under the new system was issued on 27 October 2016 by certification body DNV GL, for the Vestas 2 MW platform’s V100-2.0 MW mark 10 version. Christer Eriksson, DNV GL’s Service Line Leader for Type Certification and an active member of the IECRE committees, comments, “We are happy to present Vestas with the first IECRE wind turbine type certificate in the industry. For more than 30 years DNV GL is committed to drive the renewable energy industry forward by taking a leading role in developing and revising international standards through involvement in a number of IEC committees and by developing our own service documents together with the industry.”