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Abstract Existing estimations of waste from wind energy infrastructure that is headed for, flowing through, or having reached the terminus of various post-processing pathways have primarily relied on reported capacity to extrapolate the material weight of turbine components. This data can be used to project future streams of composite blade material coming from wind farm repowering and decommissioning and inform policies to optimize or improve certain blade End of Life (EoL) options. However, rated capacity alone is insufficient to quantify or characterize the dynamics of US wind fleet retirement, since turbines are often repowered with new blades but their capacity remains the same. This research demonstrates an alternative method, comparing various mass estimation techniques and identifying blade models that have been retired or are soon to enter waste pathways due to turbine repowering by spatiotemporal comparison of periodic versions of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Wind Turbine Database (USWTDB). These analyses are used to compile a list of turbine and blade models that will be at the forefront of national repowering and decommissioning movements in the near future. Mass of future waste flows are totalled and can help inform protocols and frameworks for blade material EoL processes. 

Millions of tons of GFRP composites are expected to stockpile in the next 20-30 years from decommissioning wind turbine blades, which are made primarily of these materials. Responsible and attractive solutions are currently being studied by several research teams across Europe and the United States. The Re-Wind Network is one of these research teams that focuses on developing strategies and methodologies to transform the decommissioned wind blades into ready-to-use civil infrastructure (e.g., pedestrian bridge girders and power transmission poles). This paper reports on testing of a part of a full-sized power transmission pole prototype, made from a decommissioned GE37 wind turbine blade, and loaded in the gravity direction mimicking expected loads during its “new” lifetime. Full-scale connection testing is summarized and combined with the results of the test on the 5.5 m high full-size section of the prototype to obtain safety factors for various structural components under different expected load cases (these include gravity, wind, and ice loads). Structural Integrity of the various components of the power pole is studied to prove efficacy of the proposed second-life application of the decommissioned wind blade as a power transmission pole. Recommendations to improve the design for the planned future field full-blade prototyping are emphasized. 

This paper presents two case studies of the repurposing projects of decommissioned wind turbine blades in architectural and structural engineering applications conducted under a multinational research project is entitled “Re-Wind” (www.re-wind.info) that was funded by the US-Ireland Tripartite program. The group has worked closely together in the Re-Wind Network over the past five years to conduct research on the topic of repurposing of decommissioned FRP wind turbine blades. Repurposing is defined by the ReWind team as the reverse engineering, redesigning and remanufacturing of a wind blade that has reached the end of its life on a turbine and taken out of service and then reused as a load-bearing structural element in a new structure (e.g., bridge, transmission pole, sound barrier, sea-wall, shelter). Further repurposing examples are provided in a publicly available Re-Wind Design Catalog. The Re-Wind Network was the first group to develop practical methods and design procedures to make these new “second-life” structures. The Network has developed design and construction details for two full-size prototype demonstration structures – a pedestrian bridge constructed in Cork, Ireland in January 2022 and a transmission pole to be constructed at the Smoky Hills Wind Farm in Lincoln and Ellsworth Counties, in Kansas, USA in the late 2022. The paper provides details on the planning, design, analysis, testing and construction of these two demonstration projects.