Offshore wind turbine manufacturer Adwen and turbine rotor blades supplier LM Wind Power have unveiled the world’s longest wind turbine blade.
The 88.4 meter wind turbine blade has been designed for Adwen’s AD 8-180 wind turbine, an 8 MW wind turbine with a 180 meter rotor diameter. The image shown above is of the very first of the wind turbine blades for this new design, manufactured at LM Wind Power’s factory in Lunderskov, Denmark.
“When you are building the largest wind turbine in the world, almost everything you do is an unprecedented challenge,” said Luis Álvarez, Adwen General Manager. “We are going where no one else has ever gone before, pushing all the known frontiers in the industry. Having developed and integrated together with LM Wind Power the first unit of the longest blade ever and being able to start testing is a key step forward in the development of our AD 8-180 and proves that Adwen is at the forefront of the industry.”
According to Adwen, “the engineering teams of both companies have been working together for months to design and integrate a blade that represents an important step forward in the race to lower the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCoE).”
The new 8 MW wind turbine is a big step towards lowering the LCoE of offshore wind energy, with the LM 88.4 P blade being designed with manufacturability and reliability at the forefront of developers’ minds. “The 88.4 meter length of the blades is the best compromise between swept area, energy production, and the weight as well as the loads transferred to the wind turbine,” Adwen said in their press release. This provides the best combination of balance of plant costs, and goes a long way to ensuring that the AD 8-180 will be a wind turbine capable of low electricity generating costs.
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