Chinese renewables giant, Ming Yang Energy Group, continues to push the limits of what’s possible in the offshore wind industry, this time announcing plans to build a world-record 22-megawatt turbine with Eiffel-Tower-sized blades.
The engineering and design team expects to complete early prototype models within two years, according to Ming Yang insiders.
Companies like Ming Yang and fellow Chinese renewable energy firm, Xinjiang Goldwind, are racing to build bigger and more powerful turbines in an effort to boost efficiency while simultaneously lowering maintenance costs.
The Zhongshan-based energy company made news in January this year when it unveiled an 18 megawatt MySE 18.X-28.X turbine, which has a listed rotor diameter of 140 metres. Now, its latest creation promises to dwarf that, with an estimated 310-metre rotor diameter.
Ming Yang’s concept for the giant 22 megawatt model was presented at the China Wind Power 2023 exhibition in the Chinese capital last week.
Officially called the MySE22MW, the giant offshore turbine was specifically designed to function in “high wind” regions such as the Taiwan Strait, Vietnam and the Sea of Japan.
Ming Yang also revealed that their factories in Inner Mongolia had commenced production on a 233-243-metre onshore turbine. The 11 megawatt unit is reportedly designed specifically with harsh desert conditions in mind, according to the presentation.
The MySE22MW turbine will be suitable for fixed-bottom operations, where the base of the turbine is secured to the seabed, usually closer to the shoreline. It will also work for floating operations, where each turbine sits on top of a platform, typically further out at sea where anchoring the gigantic power generators becomes more tricky.
China has systematically transformed its energy mix since President Xi Jinping’s pledge at the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris in 2015 where he promised that China would reach peak emissions by 2030 and carbon net neutrality by 2060.
The world’s second-most powerful economy is responsible for an estimated 28 per cent of the planet’s total emissions.
While the Chinese industrial complex still has a complicated relationship with coal, it has installed more wind, solar and hydro farms than any other country since Xi’s pledge.
Earlier this year, the country announced the world’s largest hydro-solar project at the Sichuan-based Kela power plant had begun operations.
The Kela plant has a total installed capacity of three million kilowatts – enough to charge 15 000 electric vehicles to a range of 550 kilometres in an hour, according to Chinese state media.
The hydro-solar mega plant generates an annual output of roughly two billion kilowatt-hours and can satisfy the energy needs of 700 000 homes.
