China, the undisputed global leader in wind energy, has just set another world record for the world's tallest and highest-capacity offshore wind turbine, taller than the Eiffel Tower, The Chrysler Building, and longer than the longest US aircraft carrier.
Dongfang Electric Corporation (DEC) is building these massive 1,115-foot-tall (340-m), 26-MW wind turbines at its factory in Fuzhou, Fujian Province.
The nacelle hub height sits at 607 ft (185 m), while the blade diameter is a whopping 1,107 ft (310 m). It has a blade swept area of 812,424 square feet (75,477 sq m). Do you know what else has about that much wingspan? Twelve Boeing 747s. You'd need an area the size of 14 NFL football fields, or a decent city block, to lay it down. It's a bit big.
Even with such a large profile, DEC says its offshore turbines are resistant to typhoons and corrosion. It was engineered with a "dual anti-typhoon design" to allow it to withstand extreme typhoons, but details are scarce as to what the design entails.
According to Donfang, "it has the ability to withstand a Category 17 super typhoon." That entails winds of up to 137 mph (220 km/h), about the same as a Category 4 hurricane. UNICEF describes these super typhoons as having "extremely destructive power, sinking large ships, potentially causing severe damage and serious flooding." So it's certainly impressive if these whopping airfoils can survive such a maelstrom.
This record-breaking behemoth can generate about 100 GWh of electricity a year assuming wind speeds averaging 22 mph (36 km/h), making a single unit capable of powering roughly 55,000 Chinese homes – or about 9,200 American homes.
Dongfang's 26-MW turbine surpasses the previous largest turbine: Mingyang's 20-MW offshore wind turbine by a hefty amount in size and capacity.
China's current level of wind energy is right around 470 GW of wind power, more than triple that of the second-ranked USA with 148 GW of wind capacity. Germany ranks third with 69 GW of clean wind energy.
Random thoughts: Running at maximum capacity and assuming no infrastructure losses, 470 GW of electricity could theoretically power around 388 million US households. As of the 2023 US Census, there are only around 140 million housing units in the United States.
And as ridiculously massive as this turbine is, there's every chance it'll soon be dwarfed by others even bigger. As we discussed back in 2021, when our minds were boggled by a mere 16-MW Mingyang turbine, the longer a wind turbine's blades get, the greater the incentive becomes to make them even longer, since the swept area of a circle varies with the square of the radius.
Put it this way; if you double the blade length of a turbine, you get four times as much swept area and thus four times greater power generation capabilities – but if you add the same extra length again, you gain an extra five times the original swept area, and end up larger by a factor of nine.
So these might already be some of the largest machines the world has ever seen – but there's every reason to believe they're going to get a lot bigger. Amazing stuff!
Source: Dongfang Electric Corp
