World record in a single turbine
There is intense competition between China and Europe in the field of the most powerful wind turbines. European manufacturer Vestas announced earlier this year that the first electricity was produced by installing the V236-15.0 MW prototype, the world’s largest and most powerful wind turbine. Not long after that, China broke this record by announcing its 18 MW concepts, and in the past weeks, the Chinese company Three Gorges Energy commissioned the world’s largest offshore wind turbine MingYang Smart Energy MySE 16-260 with a capacity of 16 MW. Now it has been announced that the Vestas V236-15.0 MW prototype produces 363 megawatt-hours of energy in a 24-hour period.
This value represents a record in the energy obtained from only one turbine in a single day. However, Vestas installed its 15 megawatt (MW) offshore wind turbine in Denmark in December 2022, where extensive testing of the turbine began. The prototype turbine also managed to reach full capacity of 15 MW for the first time in April.
The Vestas V236-15.0 MW is one of the largest in its field, with a rotor diameter of 236 meters, wings of 115.5 meters and a height of 280 meters. A single V236-15.0 MW can deliver 80 GWh of generation capacity per year. This large capacity can provide energy to 20,000 households and save more than 38,000 tons of carbon dioxide (equivalent to removing 25,000 cars from the roads). This solution from Vestas will be used in offshore farms of the USA, which is expected to be operational in the coming years.