Gamesa Begins Assembly Of New G132-5.0 MW Prototype Wind Turbine
One of the largest wind turbine manufacturers in the world, Gamesa (Gamesa Corporación Tecnológica), has started assembling its prototype G132-5.0 MW turbine — which will be outfitted with one of the biggest onshore rotors in the world once completed at its research and development (R&D) facility in Alaiz/Navarre, Spain.
In the service of this aim, Gamesa has exchanged the wind turbine blades of the G128-5.0 MW — already in operation at the R&D facility in Alaiz over the last year — with the blades of the G132-5.0 MW. The target is for the wind turbine prototype to start producing electricity around the beginning of May.
A recent press release from Gamesa provides more:
This assembly job constitutes a logistical challenge for Gamesa: the blades of the G132-5.0 MW, each 64.5 metres in length, are the longest ever transported in Spain and were brought in a single piece from the factory in Aoiz, where they were made, to the R&D facility in Alaiz. The complexity of the transfer required the individual transportation of each blade.
Completion of the assembly work will kick-start the turbine validation and testing process with a view to obtaining type certification by the end of 2015, a prerequisite for industrialising and commercialising this model. To this end, in addition to the prototype’s three blades, the company has made a fourth blade for testing at CENER, Spain’s national renewable energy centre. The static tests have already been completed and the fatigue tests (vertical and horizontal movements) are underway; these tests will take 5 months. All of these tests will also help to certify the blade to be installed in the G132-5.0 MW offshore model.
To give you an idea of why Gamesa is willing to go to all this trouble — the prototype G132-5.0 MW generates ~3% more electricity than the G128-5.0 MW, and is capable of generating enough electricity to provide for the electricity needs of roughly 5000 households in Spain for 1 year. This comes via the use of a wind turbine with a rotor diameter of 132 meters, as well as a total height of 186 meters.
So, a truly massive wind turbine, in other words.
Image Credit: Gamesa
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
CleanTechnica Holiday Wish Book
Our Latest EVObsession Video
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
These things just keep on getting bigger and better. For the rest of my metric-ally deprived countrymen I already played with the calculator, the 64.5 metre turbine blade equals out to 215 feet.
Such a shame that our country that got its act together before to make some very impressive projects is letting the squabbling brats in DC keep us from keeping up or even outdo this type of homemade power generation. I love the view of the mountains from my adopted Tennessee home, seeing some of these setting on the tops of them would be much preferential to the nuke plant TVA is still pushing to build.
If you’re talking about Bellefonte , TVA just put that one on ice a few days ago.
TVA has a 30b cap. They are at 25b. And nat gas capacity cost is peanuts. As the article says, Watts Barr could be the last TVA nuke for a long time.http://neutronbytes.com/2015/04/11/tva-backs-away-from-bellefonte/
That article doesn’t mention TVA importing wind-electricity from Oklahoma.
The Southeast is finally catching on to the economic advantages of wind and solar.
Thanks for the good news on that one Bob, but it is the Watts Bar expansion that I was hoping would be stopped. From the link from eveee it looks like the financing problems from the last couple years are no longer going to stop it, so with a local attitude that TVA does no wrong, social protest is basically ineffective.
It isn’t real close, but a bad enough accident or screw up and the right weather patterns would definitely cause problems for my locale.
Maybe the economics of wind, solar and etc will improve enough over the next twenty years that an early shut down will let the boys not have to be concerned about what may go wrong there in their future.
LOL, and the TVA will probably roll the $6B+ in losses from Bellefonte into its customers’ bills without any opposition from state / federal regulators.