China company announces huge leap in offshore wind turbine size, surprising industry

BEIJING – China’s Dongfang Electric has surprised the offshore wind industry with an announcement that it has built a new turbine radically larger than anything previously available in the sector.

Dongfang on Oct 12 rolled out a 26MW turbine off the production line, the company said in a statement. That is 31 per cent bigger than the previous record of 18MW, and surpasses even the largest models announced but not yet constructed, according to BloombergNEF data.

Turbine manufacturers are looking to increase the size of offshore equipment to reduce costs by generating more power from fewer units. Lower prices are still needed because the technology remains more expensive than fossil fuels such as coal in most parts of the world. 

Chinese manufacturers also face fierce competition from their peers, and have repeatedly broken size records in recent years.

Dongfang included photos in its statement of the nacelle, a core part of the turbine that contains the generator, without showing the other elements of the clean-power generating machine such as the blades. It said the blades were 310m in diameter.

The company, based in Chengdu, Sichuan, produces 18MW turbines, and in June, said one of its machines had started generating electricity off the coast of Guangdong province. China’s Mingyang Smart Energy Group and Windey Energy Technology Group also manufacture units of that size.

Separately, Chinese wind manufacturer CRRC said last week that it had produced the largest floating offshore wind turbine, with a capacity of 20MW.

The announcements come ahead of the nation’s biggest industry event – China Wind Power – which starts on Oct 16 in Beijing. BLOOMBERG