Chinese Firm Announces Huge Leap in Offshore Wind Turbine Size

(Bloomberg) -- China’s Dongfang Electric Corp. has surprised the offshore wind industry with an announcement that it’s built a new turbine radically larger than anything previously available in the sector.

Dongfang on Saturday rolled out a 26-megawatt turbine off the production line, the company said in a statement. That’s 31% bigger than the previous record of 18 megawatts, and surpasses even the largest models announced but not yet constructed, according to BloombergNEF data.

Turbine manufacturers are looking to increase the size of offshore equipment to reduce costs by generating more power from fewer units. Lower prices are still needed because the technology remains more expensive than fossil fuels such as coal in most parts of the world. 

Chinese manufacturers also face fierce competition from their peers, and have repeatedly broken size records in recent years.

Dongfang included photos in its statement of the nacelle, a core part of the turbine that contains the generator, without showing the other elements of the clean-power generating machine such as the blades. It said the blades were 310 meters (1,017 feet) in diameter.

The Chengdu, Sichuan-based company, produces 18 megawatt turbines, and in June said one of its machines had started generating electricity off the coast of Guangdong province. China’s Mingyang Smart Energy Group Ltd. and Windey Energy Technology Group Co. also manufacture units of that size.

Separately, Chinese wind turbine manufacturer CRRC Corp Ltd., said last week that it had produced the largest floating offshore wind turbine, with a capacity of 20 megawatts. The announcements come ahead of the nation’s biggest industry event — China Wind Power — which starts Wednesday in Beijing. 

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.