An Exploratory Study into the Economic and Environmental Impacts of Additively Manufactured Modular Tooling for Wind Turbine Blade Production

Increasing wind power is a key pillar of the pathway towards 100% clean electricity by 2035 in the US. To reach this goal, cumulative generation capacity will likely have to increase by 400-800% from 2023 to 2035. One constraint on this increase is the number of wind turbine blade molds in commission, which limits the turbine blade production rate. These molds are built using a resin-fiberglass composite with a lead time of 26-40 weeks. The molds are then typically discarded not due to physical degradation but due to changes in the blade geometry requirements for new wind sites. To minimize blade production lead time, a new modular mold is proposed that can be reconfigured to produce a range of different blade geometries. A cradle-to-gate manufacturing cost, energy and lead time model was constructed to compare a durable additively manufactured modular aluminum mold to the conventionally produced fiberglass composite mold. Modular molds are estimated to be quicker, but more expensive and energy-intensive to build than conventional molds. A US level wind turbine blade fleet analysis suggests modular molds could lead to around 25% fewer molds needing to be produced cumulatively by 2035 to meet the clean electricity target.