Why are wind turbines getting bigger and bigger? It’s easy: they produce much more electricity with a small increase in cost.
The record of the tallest wind turbine in the world it is beaten almost every year. But there is a logical and technical reason for this.
The Chinese power company Mingyang Smart Energy has presented its new MySE 16.0-242 wind turbine, and the data is incredible. It measures 242 meters high, and its three blades reach 118 meters each.
When it spins, the blades cover an area equivalent to 6 football fields, which apparently is also a measure of surface in China, as in Spain …
Although they are designed to be placed on the seabed or on a floating surface, they can also be installed on land.
Only one of these turbines generates 80,000 MWh of electricity per year, enough to supply 20,000 homes, with a life cycle of 25 years.
At this time, the electricity it generates avoids releasing 1.6 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, if that electricity had been generated with coal.
As we have mentioned, wind turbines are getting taller and more bulky. MingYang herself explains it in the Press release: the MySE 16.0-242 turbine is 19% larger than its previous model, and generates 45% more electricity.
With a small increase in size, production goes up a lot. So until engineering says: “we can get here“Wind turbines are going to keep growing and growing.
This increase in production is important, because until now the main problem of wind energy produced in the sea, is that it is more expensive than solar energy.
But if you can significantly increase production with these larger turbines, without increasing the cost too much, the price is going to equalize.
It is vital that you improve the performance of wind turbines, because many will be needed to supply the industry, as fossil fuels are abandoned.
The world’s largest wind turbine It will begin to be built in 2022, and after a series of tests, it will be completed in 2023. It will begin to be commercialized in 2024. The highest in the world is currently in Germany.