Siemens Gamesa has completed work on what to date is the world’s most powerful installed wind turbine. The final blades for the 21.5-MW prototype offshore turbine were installed April 2 at the Østerild test center in northern Denmark.
Development of the turbine, the latest entrant in a global race to build ever-larger offshore wind turbines, was first reported in June 2024. Siemens Gamesa last year said the so-called HIPPOW project, part of the European Green Deal program, “will deliver the installation, operation, and testing of the world’s most powerful offshore wind turbine prototype. It will validate several new technological developments and obtain the necessary certifications, before starting full-scale production of Siemens Gamesa’s next offshore wind turbine model.”
Siemens Gamesa reportedly received €30 million ($32.2 million) in funding from the European Union for testing of the prototype at the National Test Centre for Large Wind Turbines at Østerild. The new turbine, called the SG DD-276, has a 276-meter rotor.
China Dominates Market
Chinese companies have dominated the market for ever-larger offshore wind turbines. Goldwind in December of last year said it was producing a 22-MW model at its manufacturing base in Shantou, in Guangdong province. The company said the turbine could generate as much as 25 MW of power.
Goldwind was among three Chinese groups, along with Shanghai Electric and CSSC Haizhuang, that announced plans for 25-MW model turbines at the China Wind Power 2024 conference in Beijing.
China’s Mingyang Smart Energy late last summer said it had installed “the world’s largest single-capacity offshore wind turbine,” a 20-MW model, at a project in Hainan, China. Mingyang said its MySE18.X-20MW turbine, featuring a wind rotor diameter of as much as 292 meters (958 feet), would have a maximum wind sweeping area of 66,966 square meters, an area larger than 12 football fields. Mingyang also has said it is working on a 22-MW offshore wind turbine.
Several other Chinese manufacturers have announced offshore wind turbines in the 18-MW range. General Electric last year said it is developing a 17- to 18-MW model that could launch within the next few years.
Siemens Gamesa earlier had said the new offshore model would have 40% more output than the company’s previous largest turbine, a 14-MW model that could reach up to 15 MW with the company’s Power Boost feature.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.
