• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

China Has Started Building A Wind Farm Using The World’s Largest Wind Turbines

February 7, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Wind turbines are getting ever larger, particularly offshore, but even by the standards of modern titans those being installed at the Zhangpu Liuao offshore wind farm are absolute beasts. According to the China Global Television Network, the farm is to be the first outing of the 16-megawatt turbine being produced by Goldwind Science and Technology Co., and will have a combined capacity of 400 megawatts.

The hub will sit 146 meters (480 feet) above the ocean, one and a half times the height of the Statue of Liberty’s torch. The blades will sweep out a diameter of 252 meters (827 feet), making each blade longer than a football pitch. The China Three Gorges Corporation, who are building the farm, estimate each turbine will produce enough electricity to power 36,000 typical Chinese households and prevent the release of 54,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Advertisement

Larger turbines need longer blades to drive them, and therefore to be placed on higher towers. This has its advantages, since the wind is steadier and blows more frequently at higher altitude, but it also involves plenty of technical challenges. When wind farms were overwhelmingly on land, transporting the components by truck put something of a ceiling on the size of each turbine, reinforced by neighbors’ more strenuous objections to taller installations.

However, as the nations around the North Sea started moving more of their wind farms offshore, developers started to seize the opportunities provided by installation from ships. The first offshore wind farm, Vindeby, was built in 1991 and used 0.45 megawatts. Once offshore wind farms with several hundred megawatts of total power started appearing they used turbines in the 3-4-megawatt range. Operating at an average of 40 percent capacity, as is common, a single turbine like this can produce enough power for up to 4,000 UK households.

Ten years ago when farms that size first started appearing offshore they needed large public subsidies. In a (very successful) effort to make offshore wind competitive with fossil fuels, manufacturers and developers decided fewer, more powerful turbines were the answer. The current largest offshore wind farm in the world, Hornsea 2, uses 8.0-megawatt machines. Last year also saw the commissioning of Moray East using 9.5-megawatt giants.

China, on the other hand, has continued to favor larger numbers of small turbines. It’s largest current offshore farm, Jiangsu Qidong, uses a mix of turbines from different manufacturers, but the average size is 6 megawatts – big if they were on land, but well behind the European offshore equivalents. The largest model featured on Goldwind’s website is 8.0 megawatts. 

The nacelle of the 16-megawatt Goldwind wind turbine, soon to be the largest operating in the world

The nacelle of the 16-megawatt Goldwind wind turbine, soon to be the largest operating in the world. Image credit: Goldwind Technology

Meanwhile Danish manufacturer Vestas are testing the prototype of their 15-megawatt V236.

However, when China decides to go big it seldom does things by halves. If the state-sponsored media outlets are to be believed, they have seized the lead in the massive turbine race. In addition to the behemoths reportedly being installed 33 kilometers (20 miles) off Fujian province, Haizhuang Wind Power has announced production of an 18-megawatt leviathan, and Mingyang Smart Energy have announced plans to “move beyond the 18 [megawatt] threshold”. One expert is predicting 25 megawatts soon. 

One aspect of offshore wind where Europe still has the lead is in floating wind farms. Although still largely experimental, floating platforms allow wind farms to be built in deeper waters which are usually further from shore and have steadier winds. The FloatGen test site off Brittany uses a 2-megawatt turbine, puny by these standards, but whose location has just allowed it to run at 60 percent capacity over the last three months.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Luxury, mining stocks weigh on Europe ahead of U.S. inflation data
  2. Golf-U.S. wins Ryder Cup and opens door to new era
  3. Suicide bomber kills scores in Afghan mosque attack
  4. Humans Will Walk On The Moon In 2025, NASA Announces

Source Link: China Has Started Building A Wind Farm Using The World’s Largest Wind Turbines

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version