20MW wind turbines

[dan_b]

Big boy!

https://renews.biz/95363/mingyang-insta ... w-turbine/

[Oliver90owner]

Wow! That must surely be getting close to the practical maximum?

I remember, from about 20 years ago, when Dave - the installing engineer at Wood Green Animal Sanctuary - offered me a climb up the 250kW turbine (replaced, now, with a near 1MW turbine). It produced 268kW on at least one occasion.

[dan_b]

These machines are certainly absolutely enormous now aren’t they - skyscrapers that are designed to move. Agree it’s hard to imagine they can get much bigger - but then I think we probably thought that when they went from 1 to 3, then 8. Then 12 suddenly seemed colossal, and then we got 15.

I guess as much of the engineering challenge with these is how to actually transport and install them. The knock on impact on the sizes of the vessels and cranes needed must also be significant

[nowty]

And we already knew they are also working on a 22MW turbine.
https://renews.biz/88989/mingyang-launc ... d-turbine/

[Mart]

According to Mingyang, at an average wind speed of 8.5 metres per second the turbine can generate 80m kWh annually.

Boy that's big and powerful. I make it a reasonable 46% capacity factor. So from there we'd only need ~4,000 WT's (not wind farms) to equal the UK's current leccy demand.

Love engineering, but know very little about it, but presumably increasing the length of a blade results in a disproportionate increase in mass, perhaps 8fold for a 2x length based on doubling all three dimensions? So an ever more massive effort to go longer/bigger. With ever more strength needed at the start of each blade.

Mind boogling!

[AE-NMidlands]

Remember Icarus...
But I suppose somebody has to pilot these huge things, so that other windfarms can be re-equipped when the reliability has been established.

Question: Unlike a solar pv array where you can easily upgrade to higher-performance panels, is a windfarm limited by the density of its turbines - obviously installed to make the best use of the power output available when it was designed? Or are they spaced out so that individual turbines with double the output will still be worth putting in at an upgrade? Or would the foundations for a 12MW be completely inadequate to anchor a 30 MW turbine?

I can imaginer the transformer capacity not being over-specified initially (pointless first cost) so that would stop an upgrade anyway.

[resybaby]

Or would the foundations for a 12MW be completely inadequate to anchor a 30 MW turbine?

Was wondering exactly the same AE.
Cant imagine the original concrete block would be sufficently 'oversized' to cope with the forces a larger turbine would create.
Question to ask Ripple, maybe?

[Joeboy]

And we already knew they are also working on a 22MW turbine.
https://renews.biz/88989/mingyang-launc ... d-turbine/

Gobi desert and typhoon resistant. Reminds me of the first time I clapped eyes on the Giza plateau pyramids from the air. "Oh they're big", 30 seconds later "Wow, really humongous"! Awe inspiring.