I confused the 0.8 kt figure with your 3 kt figure, yeah the figures get very close to the USGS figures including the spindle magnets. The NdFeB figures on slides 45 and 46 are indeed off, the figures on slides 38-40 however are v. close to the USGS though.

The current issue of Renewable Energy Focus has a review of 2010 wind production (online.qmags.com/REW0511). Total installations last year were 37.64 GW of which offshore represented 1.16 GW. Half of all wind turbines were installed in China (18.9 GW) with the US in second place with 14.9% (5.6 GW) and much of the rest in European countries.

The technology trends section is dominated by permanent magnets, although Winergy trumpets its ‘HybridDrive’ tech which combines a gearbox and permanent magnets which only uses 20% of the REs that a full direct drive turbine uses.

In its Wind Energy Outlook section on the subject of direct drive the magazine states:

” Most turbines use a gearbox to increase the generator speed, but they are prone to failure and increase the mass of the turbine. A number of manufacturers have replaced gearboxes with a single, large-diameter generator which, combined with a converter, can be connected to the grid but this is not without its own challenges. Both the cost and the weight of this option currently exceed the more conventional gearbox designs. However, this approach is very promising, particularly if permanent magnets become cheaper and more powerful, lighter materials are introduced, and converters become more versatile. Direct drive options will become cost-competitive towards 2020, and are likely to become dominant.”

According to the REN 21 Renewables Status Report 2011, direct drive turbines had 18% of the market in 2011: (ren21.net/Portals/97/documents/GSR/REN21_GSR2011.pdf)

“Direct-drive turbine designs captured 18% of the global market, led by Enercon (Germany), Goldwind (China), and Hara XEMC (China). Preferred turbine sizes were 2.5MW in the U.K., 1.4 MW in China, and 1.2 MW in India. Globally, the average turbine size increased to 1.6 MW, up from 1.4 MW in 2007. Vestas launched the largest commercial turbine thus far, the dedicated offshore V164 7 MW turbine, targeting North Sea opportunities.”

Enercon (7% market share 2011) use RE-free electromagnets in their direct drive, it’s less clear what the breakdown of the remaining 11% of direct drive installations were, but a reasonable guess for 2011 RE containing installations might be 10%. If an average Nd2O3 content of 0.2 kt /GW is assumed (slide 48 of Christian Hocquard, adjusted from Nd content), although you will find higher estimates, then 2010 RE demand from wind turbines was 0.75 kt Nd2O3 (37.64*0.2*0.1). This would give wind about a 3% share of Nd + Pr demand. As RLacal states 2-3% seems a reasonable guess as Dy content, so that would equate to about 62.5 tonnes Dy or 4.2% of Dy output (1.5 kt in 2010).

In wind turbines electricity generators can have a cooling system. I suppose that there is a trade-off here: magnets with higher Dy content are more expensive but dispose of the a cooling system resulting in system savings (also efficiency savings), but if the price of those magnets goes up strongly then the cooling system is cost-effective.

Roberto

Accordingly:
Goldwind – 2650 t of PM = 800 t of Nd content
Other LS-PMG manufacturers – 240 t of Nd content
Other PM, not LS – 110 t of Nd content
Total 2010 wind industry permanent magnet generators – 1250 t of Nd

I realised of this mistake as I reviewed Arnold Magnetic’s presentation mentioned by Eamon. There Mr Constantinides states that 95% of the Chinese wind turbine installations in 2010 were using PM generators. This is not correct as e.g. the only one of the top-4 manufacturers using PMG is Goldwind. Sinovel (AMSC design), Dongfang (REpower design) and United Power (Aerodyn design) use electromagnets.

The major manufacturer of wind turbines with low-speed permanent magnet generators (LS-PMG) is Goldwind from China which installed 3.735 MW in 2010 (Source: Chinese Wind Energy Association, http://www.cwea.org.cn/upload/2010?????????.pdf). Assuming 600 kg of Nd/MW this results in 2.650 t of Nd oxide for Goldwind only.

Other significant LS-PMG wind turbine manufacturers include GE Energy (its 2.5MW machine mainly), Clipper, and licensees of the Vensys technology. I don’t have 2010 data but I roughly assume that these machines could add a 30% extra, i.e. 800 t Nd.

Other PMG used in the wind industry (e.g. by Siemens) are medium- and high-speed (i.e. from 100 to 1800 RPM), and require 1/10th of the magnet content per MW than LS-PMG require. Again a rough estimate is that in 2010 MS/HS-PMG could add 350 t of Nd demand.

The total 2010 Nd demand for the wind industry could be therefore 3.800 t.

Speaking of which – what do you make of the tonnages in slides 45 and 46 of that PDF, for REOs in Nd-Fe-B magnets? They’re off, aren’t they?

Great informative article. Thanks for the reference, I’ll concede to your point on dysprosium :-) !

Good idea on working out bottom up Nd demand, but the figure for 0.815 kt Nd2O3 demand from HDDs. The recent USGS report (based on 2008 estimates) gives as 24 kt the amount of Nd (18) and Pr (6) used in NdFeB magnets. pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2011/5094/pdf/sir2011-5094.pdf

Separately slide 45 of Christian Hocquard’s presentation last year gave HDDs a 30% share of the NdFeB market. (pdf direct download): ifri.org/downloads/comptes_rendu/fichiers/51/hocquard.pdf

This would suggest demand of 7.2 kt of Nd + Pr demand (24*0.3). Assuming the figures are right for your home PC market, perhaps the much more significant demand comes from the corporate/server market, which is where most information is stored. Indeed the current approach of server farms to increase the speed of data retrieval from HDDs is to use short-stroking (storing data on the outside tracks of the HDD to limit the distance the hard disk drive has to travel). This will use more NdFeB per GB stored and will tend to be reduced by hybrid data storage which can use SSD for the most frequently accessed data and use “full-stroking” for cold data.