Offshore Wind

The China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) is upping the ante on offshore wind, announcing it's building the largest and most powerful wind turbine ever, making a peak 18 megawatts with an enormous 260-m (853-ft) diameter on its three-bladed rotor.

Floating wind turbines are crucial to the future of offshore wind, but they require radically different thinking. French company Eolink is building a full-scale pyramid-style floating wind turbine that reduces materials and weight by more than 30%.

A prototype wind turbine has recorded an extraordinary single-day renewable energy production total, bringing in a massive 359 megawatt-hours in a 24-hour time period. To get there, it had to operate over its rated capacity, essentially all day long.

Swedish company SeaTwirl says its floating vertical-axis wind turbines have what it takes to dramatically reduce the cost of deep offshore wind energy, and it's signed a deal with Westcon to build and deploy a commercial-scale 1-MW turbine in Norway.

Norway's World Wide Wind has a radically different take on offshore wind power. These floating, vertical-axis wind turbines feature two sets of blades, tuned to contra-rotate – and they promise more than double the output of today's biggest turbines.

Siemens Gamesa has developed a fully recyclable blade that can be used to create new products when its wind-catching days are done, and it's just been installed on a turbine at a commercial wind farm in the North Sea.

Norway's Argeo has launched the first uncrewed survey and inspection vessel based on the Mariner X platform from Maritime Robotics. The Argus is expected to undertake mapping and inspection operations for offshore wind projects.

The switch has been flicked on the huge Hornsea 2 offshore wind farm, which will provide enough power for more than 1.3 million homes in the UK when it becomes fully operational next year.

More than three years after revealing plans to build a monster offshore wind turbine called the Haliade-X, GE Renewable Energy has announced that the prototype of the latest member of the family has started operating at 14 MW in Rotterdam.

China's MingYang Smart Energy has announced an offshore wind turbine even bigger than GE's monstrous Haliade-X. The MySE 16.0-242 is a 16-megawatt, 242-meter-tall behemoth capable of powering 20,000 homes per unit over a 25-year service life.

Norway's Wind Catching Systems has made a spectacular debut with a colossal floating wind turbine array it says can generate five times the annual energy of the world's biggest single turbines – while reducing costs to be immediately competitive.

GE is looking to unlock the potential of far offshore wind installations through the development of massive turbines that can operate in deeper waters, using advanced floating platforms to keep them steady as waves crash around them.