Worlds Largest Wind Turbine

pictishbroch · Tar Sands Joined: Jun 22, 2008 Posts: 27

The world’s largest wind turbine is now the Enercon E-126. This turbine has a rotor blade length of 126 meters (413 feet). The E-126 is a more sophisticated version of the E-112, formerly the world’s largest wind turbine and rated at 6 megawatts. This new turbine is officially rated at 6 megawatts too, but will most likely produce 7+ megawatts (or 20 million kilowatt hours per year). That’s enough to power about 5,000 households of four in Europe. A quick US calculation would be 938 kwh per home per month, 12 months, that’s 11,256 kwh per year per house. That’s 1776 American homes on one wind turbine.

http://www.metaefficient.com/news/new-record-worlds-largest-wind-turbine-7-megawatts.html

big push on in the UK with wind power.

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number=622004
(Google Earth)

SILENTTODD · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 1:54 am Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine

Hope it doesn't catch on fire!! I number of posts ago I ignorantly stated that I had never seen one on fire out in the San Gregorio Pass in California near Palm Springs.

Found out from a girlfriend whose son in law works on them at that location it happens all the time there!
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Hagakure_Leofman · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 5:45 am Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine

Amazing.

5,000 households in Europe.
1776 in the USA.

Shocked

Powerdown anyone?

pictishbroch · Tar Sands Joined: Jun 22, 2008 Posts: 27

Starvid · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 12:36 pm Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine

Schadenfreude · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jan 16, 2008 Posts: 606

I wonder how big the largest wind turbine could be on a cost-effective basis?

Seems like the higher you go and longer your turbine blades, the more efficient your generation will be... but then, there's the cost of raising one of these devils.

Maybe you could raise a huge one up the way that some Japanese companies have built tall buildings: by jacking them up and installing sections at the bottom.

You could rig one so that the plane of the blades was rotated to the horizontal to keep everything balanced while you raised it, And then turn the blade plane to the vertical once the giant thing is secured.
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Denny · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 1:55 pm Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine

I am kind of wondering, as I used to work in a truck plant, how many of these per day a large truck plant, like GM operates in Janesville, WI or Oshawa, ON could make, if retooled?

Both of these are equipped for large scale assembly and painting and have huge floor area, over 150,000 square metres each. And, it looks like they'll soon become vacant.

hugh-wright · Coal Joined: Aug 27, 2007 Posts: 17

Hmmmm...

...it's not that I'm against wind generators: but...

I spent 3 years at Cottam power station, my friend works at WestBurton: either of these two 1950's vintage coal burners can match that things yearly output, on demand, in 10 hours. Surprised

Does that give you an idea of the sheer scale of the problem? Shocked

pictishbroch · Tar Sands Joined: Jun 22, 2008 Posts: 27

pictishbroch · Tar Sands Joined: Jun 22, 2008 Posts: 27

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2008/05/a-new-wind-gene.html#comments

Enercon was prohibited from exporting their wind turbines to the US until 2010 due to infringement of U.S. Patent 5,083,039. [...] Enercon claims their intellectual property was stolen by Kenetech (US Windpower, Inc.) and patented in the US before they could do so. Kenetech made similar claims against Enercon.

According to the European Parliament: "Kenetech seeking evidence for legal action against Enercon for breach of patent rights on the grounds that Enercon had obtained commercial secrets illegally. According to an NSA employee, detailed information concerning Enercon was passed on to Kenetech via ECHELON."

It is a longer story going back to the early 1990s. It is alleged, though not proven, that the CIA 'aquired' the technical information which was patented in the U.S. by Kenetech. Later the NSA was involved to 'prove' that Enercon was in breach of that Kenetech patent.

The NSA listened in to Enercon communication and 'aquired' codes needed to enter and shut down Enercon wind generators. Some folks on Kenetech's payroll used these codes and then climbed up into the machine house of one Enercon generator in Germany. There they took plenty of pictures. These pictures were used against Enercon in the U.S. patent case by Kenetech.

Who needs enemies when one has such allies?

cephalotus · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 7:16 pm Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine

Starvid · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:55 pm Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine

cube · Fusion Joined: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 3811

isgota · Tar Sands Joined: May 31, 2008 Posts: 21 Location: Spain

Well, here in Spain wind power represents more than 10% of our electricity consumption (near 5% of our primary energy) and we are going to expand our wind power capacity to more than 20000 MW by 2010.

The special issue about Spain, is that we are an "energy island" because we have little electric connection with France so we have to deal with the non-constant nature of wind power. This is done with the use of tele-metering and forecasting tools, we are kind of world reference on it:

Tracking wind power in real time.
Wind forecast service.

Best regards.

cephalotus · Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 1:39 pm Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine

some parts in germany now have ~35% electricity from wind-energy and that does work quite well, too. (but I assume that they can exchange certain amounts of that electricity through the grid with other parts)

http://www.wind-energie.de/de/statistiken/bundeslaender/

(chart #3)