The China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) is making offshore wind power more competitive, announcing it is building the largest and most powerful wind turbine ever, with three blades and a diameter of 260 meters ( 853 feet) with a massive diameter and outputs up to 18 megawatts. rotor.
It makes sense for a shipbuilding company to participate in this project. The much smaller turbine blades are already very cumbersome to transport. So building them right next to the docks of a facility designed to create, handle, and launch huge structures into water eliminates a lot of the problems when trying to get bigger.
When it comes to wind, size matters most. The longer the blade, the larger the swept area and the more energy you can get from a single pole. And when it comes to offshore wind, the cost of subsea foundations is huge, so being able to generate more energy from less is a big deal.
The previous record holder, MingYang Smart Energy MySE 16.0-242, sweeps an area of 46,000 square meters (495,140 square feet) with a 118 m (387 foot) blade. CSSC Haizhuang’s new H260-18MW turbine will lengthen the blades by 8.5% to 128 m (420 ft) and increase the swept area by 15.2% to 53,000 sq m (570,490 sq ft).
CSSC Kaiso
In a de-facto standard for placing huge areas in some human context, this is a jump from a swept area equivalent to about 8.6 on a standard NFL football field to about 9.9. Under peak conditions, the H260-18MW machine produces 44.8 kWh of energy per revolution.
Oddly enough, at the end of the day, it promises to deliver less power than a small MingYang turbine. CSSC says the new size king of offshore wind power “can output more than 74 million kilowatt-hours of clean electricity annually, meeting the annual power consumption of 40,000 households of three.” . The 242 turbines can generate 80,000 MWh of electricity each year, enough to power over 20,000 homes. ’ They sound like completely different households.
CSSC Kaiso
According to CSSC, a 1 gigawatt capacity offshore wind farm example using these 18 MW beasts would require 13% fewer units than using 16 MW turbines, with a corresponding reduction in subsea operations. , by reducing cabling, etc., the farm costs “hundreds of millions of yuan”, and 100 million yuan is equivalent to about $14.8 million at the current exchange rate.
Either way, it will be interesting to see how they perform in the real world.CSSC Haizhuang seems to be on track to produce the first units.To avoid supply chain issues , builds most of its components in its own factory. The company seems to have already made a giant generator, gearbox, frame and at least one giant SuperBlade+ wing for this thing. He’s one of the biggest bearings I’ve ever seen. In fact, the main nacelle appears to be more or less assembled, and the hub where the blades are attached also looks fairly close.
The video below looks like a lot of this monster has been made, but it should be pointed out that it was uploaded by a wind energy enthusiast and not by the company itself. I couldn’t find an official CSSC video, which is not surprising given that Chinese companies are often spotty in their press releases in English. So please understand that below advice.
CSSC Haizhuang H260 18MW Offshore Wind Turbine Giant Appears
Source: CSSC Kaiso
