A Vestas wind turbine photographed in Denmark. The company said on Tuesday it would launch a wind turbine tower on land with a core height of 199 metres.
Jonas Walzberg | Alliance of the image | Getty Images
Danish company Vestas said on Tuesday it was launching an onshore wind turbine tower with a core height of 199 meters (just under 653 feet), in the latest example of how the sector is increasingly turning to structures big.
In a statement, the Aarhus-based company described it as “currently the world’s tallest land-based wind turbine tower”.
Vestas said the launch was being carried out in cooperation with German company Max Bögl.
Vestas said the tower’s height would make it “possible to harvest stronger and more consistent wind” and increase a turbine’s electricity output.
“Especially for projects in Central Europe that are generally restricted in the available planning space, this makes an important contribution to maximizing the production of green electricity,” he added.
The tower has been designed to be used by Vestas’ V172-7.2MW turbine. The idea is to use it in Germany and Austria. The facilities will be offered in 2025.
The tower uses both concrete and steel, combining what Vestas called “proprietary technologies” of itself and Max Bögl.
Towers are important components of a wind turbine, with crucial equipment including the nacelle and the blades resting on it. The US Department of Energy defines the hub height of a turbine as “the distance from the ground to the middle of the turbine rotor.”
The DOE adds that the core height for utility-scale land-based turbines “has increased by 66% since 1998-1999, to about 94 meters (308 feet) by 2021.” It is about the same height as the Statue of Liberty.
At 199 meters, the height of Vestas’ core would be significantly higher.
The growing size of wind turbines has raised concerns about whether port infrastructure, highways and ships used to install turbines at sea can cope. Despite this, the era of “oversized” turbines is fast approaching.
Alongside the onshore sector, offshore turbines have also grown in size in recent years. GE Renewable Energy’s Haliade-X offshore turbine, for example, has a height of up to 260 meters and blades measuring 107 meters.
A number of large offshore wind energy projects have taken shape in recent years. In early September, Danish energy firm Orsted said the “world’s largest offshore wind farm” was fully operational.
Looking ahead, the White House also announced this month that it was targeting 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind capacity by 2035.
“The Biden-Harris Administration is launching coordinated actions to develop new floating offshore wind platforms, an emerging clean energy technology that will help the United States lead in offshore wind,” in a statement, which was also released by the US Department of the Interior. said
The announcement said the 15 GW target would provide enough clean energy to power more than 5 million homes. It builds on the administration’s goal of reaching 30 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030, an existing ambition that will be met primarily by offshore wind installations.
