Wednesday, March 27, 2024

MingYang launches the world’s largest offshore Hybrid Drive wind turbine

There is fierce competition between the major players in the wind energy market to develop the most efficient wind turbines on the market. MingYang Smart Energy Group is one of the largest private wind turbine manufacturers in China and has established a complete value chain from design and production to sales and maintenance.

Now the Chinese company has developed what it claims is the world’s largest offshore wind turbine – even bigger than GE’s most powerful Haliade-X. The new MySE 16.0-242 wind turbine features an exceptional nameplate capacity of 16MW, a 242-meter diameter rotor, 118-meter long blades, and a staggering 46,000 square meters swept area equivalent of more than six soccer fields. This is almost 7% more than Vestas Wind Systems’ 15MW turbine, which was introduced in February 2021 and will be produced in 2024.

MingYang thus moves the boundaries of wind energy production even further, and a single MySE 16.0-242 turbine can generate 80,000 MWh of electricity every year, enough to power more than 20,000 households. That is 45% more than the company’s previous wind turbine model, MySE 11.0-203, from just a 19% increase in diameter and swept area.

In addition, one MySE 16.0-242 can eliminate more than 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 emissions over the course of its designed 25-year lifespan. This figure shows the importance of every offshore wind turbine in the fight against climate change.

According to the company, the nacelle weight of the MySE 16.0-242 is competitively low at less than 37 tonnes per MW. Compared to a heavier nacelle, its modest head mass allows for more efficient use of the tower and foundation construction, resulting in fewer purchased materials and logistics.

The new offshore wind turbine can be installed on the seafloor or on a floating base. The turbine has recently been certified by DNV and the China General Certification Center (CGC) for design, and a prototype is expected in 2022. The company expects to install a full-fledged prototype in the first half of 2023 and commercial production in the first half of 2024.

The company says the MySE 16.0-242 is the start of MingYang’s new 15MW+ offshore product platform. In the future, it is planned to grow into a portfolio of model variants that can adapt to various offshore settings, ranging from the typhoon-prone South China Sea to the constantly windy North Sea in Europe.