Turning over a strip of land at the port of Rotterdam is a wind turbine so it is difficult to photograph. The curve of its rotor is longer than the end of two American football fields. Later models will be taller than any building on the mainland of Western Europe.
Filled with sensors to collect data on wind speeds, power output and stresses on its components, the giant rotation machine in the Netherlands is a test model for a new range of wide-range window turbines organized by General Electric. When assembled in arrays, wind machines have the potential to generate power in cities, complementing excitation-spilling coal- or natural gas-powered plants that are the basis of many electric systems today.
GEA has yet to install one of these machines in seawater. As a newcomer to the Sh Fashore wind business, the company faces questions about how quickly and efficiently it can increase production to build and install hundreds of turbines.
But already the giant turbines have turned heads in the industry. The top executive of the world’s leading wind farm developer called it “a leap forward with the latest technology.” And the size and advance sales of the machine “shook the industry,” the analyst said.
The prototype is the first in a pay generation of new machines that are already more powerful than the third most in commercial service. As such, it is changing the business calculations of wind equipment manufacturers, developers and investors.
G.E. Machines will have generating capacity that would have been almost incredible a decade ago. One will also be able to power out 13 megawatts of power, enough to illuminate a city with about 12,000 homes.
The turbine is capable of producing as many as four engines of a Boeing 7 j7 jet, to be deployed at sea according to GE, where developers have been informed that they can install a much stronger and more number of turbines than land. And more reliable.
The race to build larger turbines is moving faster than many industries have predicted. GE’s Halied-X produces about 30 times more electricity than the first sh Fashore machines installed in Denmark in 1991.
Industry officials say consumers are also likely to demand larger machines in the coming years. On the other hand, they predict that, just as commercial airports pick up Airbus A with 0, turbines will reach a point where overcapacity no longer makes sense.
“We will also reach a plateau; We don’t know where it is yet, “said G. Mor Fister, Morton Pilgard Rasmussen, chief technological officer at the Fashore Wind Unit for Renewable Energy at Siemens Games, a leading manufacturer of sh fasher turbines.
However, sh Fasher turbines now account for only 5 percent of the overall wind industry’s generating capacity, but this part of the business is taking its own identity and is expected to grow faster than land-based wind in the coming years.
Over the past three decades sh fashore technology has gained momentum in Northern Europe, and now it has spread to the East Coast of the United States as well as Asia, including Taiwan, China and South Korea. The multi-billion dollar ticket projects that are possible at sea are attracting big investors, including oil companies like BP and Royal Dutch Shell, who want to rapidly increase their green space opportunities. According to the Paris-based forecasting group International Energy Agency, capital investments in shfashor winds have more than tripled to more than 26 26 billion in the last decade.
At the bankruptcy auction, Enron’s land-based turbine business – a successful unit in the company – went bankrupt, when GEA began entering wind power, it began buying into Enron’s land-based turbine business. While it was a marginal power in the sh fashore industry when its officials decided to try to break it about four years ago. They saw a developed market, with only a few serious Western competitors.
However, GE officials discovered that in order to become a leader in a more challenging maritime environment, they needed to be brave. They grew to more than double the size of their existing shfashore machine, which came to GE in 2015 with its acquisition of Stalstom’s power business in France. The idea was to take the lead over major competitors such as Siemens Games and Vestas Wind Systems. Danish-based turbine manufacturer.
Larger turbines generate more electricity and, thus, more revenue than smaller machines. Size also helps reduce wind farm construction and maintenance costs as fewer turbines are needed to build a given power.
These qualities generate a powerful incentive for developers to move to the largest machine available to help countries in their efforts to win an auction for a fashore power supply deal that has been adopted by many countries. These auction formats vary, but developers have been competing to provide power at lower prices for many years.
“What they are looking for is a turbine that will allow them to win this auction,” said Vincent Schilling, who is at the center of the design and construction of the GE turbine. “That’s when turbine size plays a very important role.”
Among the early customers is Orested, a Danish company that is the world’s largest developer of Sh Fasher Wind Farms. Atlantic City has a preliminary agreement to purchase about 90 of the Halied-X machines for a project called NJOF Ocean Wind.
“I think they surprised everyone when they came out with that machine,” said David Hardy, chief executive of Sh Fosher’s business in Orested, North America.
As a large buyer of turbines, Orsted wants to help “establish this new platform and create a little volume for GE” to promote competition and innovation, Mr. Hardy said.
Analysts say the GE turbine is selling better than its competitors expected.
On Dec. 1, GE reached another preliminary agreement to provide turbines for the large wind farm Vineyard Wind from Massachusetts, including a deal to deliver 276 turbines, possibly the world’s largest wind farm at Dogger Bank, away from Britain.
Shashi Barla, chief wind analyst at market research firm Wood Mackenzie, estimates the deal, with a maintenance agreement, could raise up to 13 13 billion.
The waves created by the GE machine have forced Siemens Games to announce a range of competitive turbines. Vestas, which until recently was the industry’s largest machine in its stable, is also expected to unveil a new entry soon.
“We haven’t moved forward as a first, and we have to address that today,” said Henrik Andersen, chief executive of Vestas.
To pull off his gamble, GEA “had to start very early,” Mr. Shellings said. G.E. The business unit, called Renewable Energy, spends about 400 400 million to hire engineers and renovate factories in Saint-Nazaire and Cherbourg, France.
To create blades of such extraordinary length that do not buckle from its own weight, GEA called designers at LM Wind Power, a Danish blade manufacturer, that the company bought in 2016 for 1. 1.7 billion. Among their innovations: a material that combines carbon fiber and glass fiber to be strong and flexible despite being light weight.
The GEA should still work on how to efficiently manufacture a large number of machines, initially in plants in France and possibly in Britain and the United States. Along with the skimpy sh fisher track record, GE also needs to show that it can reliably install and maintain large machines at sea, using specialized vessels and dealing with rough weather.
“Asset owners will have to prove a lot to them to buy GE turbines,” Mr. District said.
GE’s main rival, Siemens Games, has been making it easier and cheaper to bring in larger machines, already building a prototype for a new and more powerful machine at its offshore complex at Brande on Denmark’s Jutland Peninsula. Mystery: The company’s newest models so far have not strayed far from the decade-old model.
“The basics of the machine and how it works remain the same,” said Mr Rasmussen, the unit’s chief technical officer, leading to a “starting point that was a little better than GE”.
There seems to be plenty of scope for competition. The estimate for the market “grows bigger every year,” said John Lowell, chief executive of GE’s shfashore business.
