Posted on October 21, 2022
One of the world’s biggest wind turbines has recorded a remarkable renewable energy production total, reigning in a massive 359 megawatt-hours within 24 hours.
In a tweet, Siemens Gamesa, a Spanish-German wind engineering company that manufactures wind turbines for onshore and offshore services, noted that their SG 14-222 DD has broken the record for most power produced by a single turbine in one day. The company held that the turbine had produced enough energy to drive 1.12 million miles (1.8 million km) in a mid-sized electric car!
SG 14-222 DD has now equaled the 14-MW nominal capacity of GE’s biggest Haliade-X turbines and only just trailing behind the giant 15-MW Vestas rigs and the world’s outright offshore champion, the “monstrous” MingYang 16 MW, reported New Atlas.
Enough energy to power around 18,000 households yearly
What makes the feat even more extraordinary is that the enormous wind turbine achieved the milestone just ten months after it produced its first electricity and delivered it to the grid at the test center in Østerild, Denmark. The prototype was fixed at the center in November 2021 and began producing electricity a month later.
The SG 14-222 DD is a 14 megawatt (MW) offshore wind turbine with a capacity of up to 15 MW with the “Power Boost” function. It comprises a 728 feet (222-meter) diameter rotor, 354-feet-long (108-meter-long) B108 blades which can be recycled, and a swept area of 419,792 square feet (39,000 square meters).
“With every new generation of our offshore direct drive turbine technology – which uses fewer moving parts than geared turbines – component improvements have enabled greater performance while maintaining reliability. We are able to reduce the time to market of the SG 14-222 DD thanks to standardized processes and a fully developed supply chain. Enabling high-volume production at low risk. The serial production is planned for 2024,” the company writes.
Making great strides
Siemens Gamesa was awarded the firm order from RWE for the 1.4 GW Sofia offshore wind power project. Located 195 km off the UK’s northeastern coast on Dogger Bank in the North Sea, the project will be the first to install the company’s flagship 14 MW Direct Drive offshore wind turbine.