MHI Vestas Unveils New 9 Megawatt Wind Turbine

MHI Vestas Offshore Wind has unveiled its new 9 megawatt wind turbine which, in testing at the company’s Østerild broke the energy generation record over a 24 hour period.

The continued development of offshore wind turbines continues apace, with the unveiling of MHI Vestas Offshore Wind’s latest offering. The uprated V164 8 megawatt (MW) wind turbine has been reworked so that it is able to reach 9 MW “at specific site conditions,” said the company on Thursday.

Further, the new 9 MW turbine smashed the energy generation record for a commercially available offshore wind turbine, producing 215,999.1 kilowatt-hours (kWh) over a 24 hour period.

If you’re new to the wind turbine world, an increase of 1 MW per wind turbine is a much bigger story that it might appear at first glance. With each increase in turbine power, fewer turbines are needed to meet offshore wind farm target levels, which turns into financial savings for developers and consumers. This impacts the ‘levelized cost of electricity’ of offshore wind, which as we have seen over the past year has been dropping rapidly. In the UK, the levelized cost of offshore wind fell below £100 per megawatt-hour (MWh) four years in advance of the original target set by industry and Government. Meanwhile, in the rest of the European Union, offshore wind saw the lowest levelized cost price of ‎€49.9/MWh.

“We are committed to delivering turbine technology that is in line with the development of our industry, based on our 20+ years of offshore experience,” said Torben Hvid Larsen, MHI Vestas CTO. “Reliability remains a key enabler, and our approach to developing our existing platform supports this strategy.”

“Our prototype at Østerild sets yet another record for power production, producing 216,000 kWh over a 24 hour period. We are confident that the 9 MW machine has now proven that it is ready for the market and we believe that our wind turbine will play an integral part in enabling the offshore industry to continue to drive down the cost of energy.”

The 9 MW wind turbine is already a part of the company’s product portfolio.