What wind turbines are getting up to

What wind turbines are getting up to

To get a handle on how big this new GE turbine is, let’s start with some comparisons.

I called Ben Hoen, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to get the latest numbers on wind turbine sizes. (He stresses that these are preliminary figures — LBNL has a report on this coming out in a few months, but he does not expect these figures to change much, if at all.)

According to Hoen, the average total height (from base to tip) of an onshore US turbine in 2017 was 142 meters (466 feet). The median turbine was closer to 152 meters (499 feet). In fact, Hoen said, the median is approaching the max. In other words, over time, US onshore turbines seem to be converging on roughly that height. Why? Because if you build higher than 499 feet, the Federal Aviation Administration requires some extra steps in their approval process, and apparently most developers have not found that worth the hassle.

The very tallest onshore US turbines are at the Hancock Wind project in Hancock County, Maine. Those — Vestas V117-3.3s, if you must know — are about 574 feet tall.

So that’s onshore. What about offshore? Well, as of yet, the US has one and only one operating offshore wind installation, the Block Island Wind Farm off of Rhode Island. Its turbines rise to roughly 590 feet.

How does the Haliade-X compare to all that? According to GE, it will reach 853 feet tall.

Javier Zarracina

That would be, as far as I know, the tallest wind turbine in the world. As best I can tell from googling (as I said, these things are changing quickly), the previous record holder is an 809-foot onshore turbine in Germany.

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