The Netherlands is famous for its amazing windmills, however; even the Netherlands has never seen anything like what GE is planning for it. According to GE, it is working on constructing the world’s largest wind turbine just outside the city of Rotterdam. The new wind turbine has been named Haliade-X and will be placed 850 feet high from the turbine’s base to the blade’s top.
The Haliade-X shall produce 12 megawatts of power – that is more than enough to keep the lights on in over 15,000 homes. It is a prototype of a series that the company aims to construct all over the world. The Haliade-X is meant to be an offshore turbine, however; GE is building this particular prototype on land for carrying out tests. Once the construction is complete, the engineers will spend the next five years keeping checks on the prototype and making fine alterations to the design as required.
Why does the Haliade-X need such extensive testing? It is, after all, just a wind turbine. That’s a valid question, and the answer is because the blades on this particular contraption are gigantic. Each blade measures in at over a length of 350 feet. For comparison’s sake; that is longer than a football field. The blades are so gigantic that it is not possible to transport them from GE’s factory located in North America. Therefore, the company had to construct a brand-new factory in France for constructing them.
The construction of the Haliade-X will kick off this year, and GE is hopeful that it will be able to obtain a type certificate enabling it to sell the turbine commercially no later than 2021. If all goes well, you will be witnessing these huge turbines popping up all over the North Sea and bringing clean electricity to tens of thousands of households.
