How to Deal With Growing Pains

Wind turbines are getting bigger than ever, and the manufacturing infrastructure that facilitates their construction needs to start growing with them.

Wind turbines have grown steadily in size. Not even two decades ago, they were only a sixth the size of what they are now, and they’ve been accelerating in growth ever since.

“When I started in the wind market in 2001, most turbines were 1.5 to 2 MW,” Doug Lucas, advanced engineering technologist at Timken, remembers. “Some turbine builders were working on 3 MW and 4 MW designs. As the market grew from the early 2000s to 2010, the conversation changed to 5 and 6 MW turbines. Then, in 2015, Vestas announced their 8 MW turbine...and now we’re seeing others go up to 12 MW.”

That big 12 MW turbine is one of GE’s most recent innovations from the past year, the Haliade-X, first of its class. The thing is, in a word, intense. It’s tall as a skyscraper, standing 260 meters tall with 107-meter long blades, and not only is it the biggest wind turbine you’ll find out there, it’s also one of the most efficient, with a 63 percent capacity factor. Just one turbine can power thousands of homes.