News

Aug 20, 2023

China Has Switched On the Largest Wind Turbine Ever

Showtime. When it comes to massive wind turbines, China is the undisputed leader. It was only a few weeks ago that the China Three Gorges Corporation constructed the world’s largest turbine with a

Showtime.

When it comes to massive wind turbines, China is the undisputed leader. It was only a few weeks ago that the China Three Gorges Corporation constructed the world’s largest turbine with a rotor some 827 feet in diameter. This week, the corporation one-upped itself with the successful installation of the MySE 16-260, a wind turbine with a rotor diameter of 853 feet.

This technology has come a long way since Charles Brush built the first wind turbine in the backyard of his Ohio mansion in 1888. MySE 16-260’s central tower stands almost 500 feet tall (nearly the size of the Washington Monument) and boasts a generator that weighs 385 metric tons. Mingyang Smart Energy, the designer of the turbine, said in a LinkedIn post that the turbine will “produce 67 million kWh of power annually, enough for the usage of 80,000 residents, reducing C02 by 56,000 tonnes (61,729 U.S. tons).”

The turbine can also literally withstand typhoon-force winds—a good skill to have in the (politically contentious) Taiwan Strait, where winds often exceed 32 mph. In fact, the turbine already faced its first test when Typhoon Talim slammed into China last week.

“Most of China’s coastal areas are in typhoon zones, and if there is no wind turbine that can withstand typhoons, it can be said that wind power has little future in China,” Qiying Zhang, CTO of Mingyang Smart Energy, said only days be Talim made landfall.

The turbine aced the test. Although Talim provided punishing wind speeds up to 85 mph, the MySE 16-260 is designed to withstand 178.5 mph winds, according to Electrek. That's more than double what was asked of it last week. All of the turbines that make up the growing wind farm in the Taiwan Strait are also each equipped with 1,000 “intelligent sensors,” says Mingyang Smart Energy, that can proactively respond during a typhoon.

But the U.S. isn’t just standing still and watching this happen. GE is currently developing an 18 megawatt turbine and, in March, the company said that it already have $6 billion in backorders for its Haliade-X turbine technology.

Producing electricity with turbines is an economy of scale—bigger rotors mean more wind energy can be captured, thus reducing the cost of the generated electricity. As a result, the U.S. Department of Energy has a “the bigger, the better” philosophy when it comes to wind turbine technology. With the U.S., Europe, and Asia all rushing to make bigger and better turbines, it’s likely that the MySE-260 won’t sit atop the “world’s largest” throne for long.

The history of power competition is a long and devastating one, but the race to build the best possible wind turbines is a race worth running.

Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.

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