World’s Largest Wind Turbine Has A Sweep Area Of 9 NFL Football Fields
Procuring energy from wind turbines may not be anything new, but the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) has just announced what may be the most powerful and largest offshore wind turbine ever.
The new entrance, called ‘H260-18.0’, will have an 853 feet diameter across three blades and a maximum output of 18 megawatts. When it comes to generating power from wind, a larger real estate will give you more bang for your buck. This increases the swept area and hence enlarges the harvesting area.
CSSC has devised a turbine with a swept area of 9.9 NFL football fields at its top performance in this instance. This will allow it to generate 44.8 kWh of energy with each spin.
On average, it will have an output of more than 74 million kilowatt hours of clean energy, which will power up 40,000 houses.
The behemoth energy producer would also need 13% fewer units than the 16 MW turbines and less space in the ocean. According to the company, this will reduce costs by an estimated US$14.8 million.
Since CSSC is a shipping company with its dock, the wind turbine is set to be placed right next to its facility, removing the need to transport something as enormous as this to a separate location.
Size does matter in some cases but only time will tell if it will actually help reduce emissions efficiently.
In other news, robots are being used to inspect wind turbines so that humans won’t have to do so.
[via New Atlas and Interesting Engineering, images via CSSC]
