Chinese renewable energy infrastructure company MingYang Smart Energy just announced it is building an 800-foot-tall offshore wind turbine , the largest in the world. The colossal MySE 16.0-242 is a behemoth, with 387-foot blades that traverse nearly half a million square feet (around the size of 10 football fields). Most interesting about this big-ass turbine, however, is that, alone, it can create more power than many smaller wind turbines combined. Scientists and companies increasingly believe that a key to creating more efficient wind turbines is to simply make the turbines themselves positively gigantic. The Department of Energy released a report Monday finding that turbines like MingYang’s are likely the future of wind energy, and that over the next decade turbines are going to get larger. “Back in 2010, no turbines in the United States employed rotors that were 115 meters (380 feet) in diameter or larger,” the DOE wrote. “In 2020, 91 percent of newly installed turbines featured such rotors. The average rotor diameter in 2020 was about 125 meters (410 feet)—longer than a football field.” Image: Department of Energy Eric Lantz, group research manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), also says large turbines are the future […]
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