A Monster Wind Turbine Is Upending an Industry

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/business/GE-wind-turbine.html

Source: By Stanley Reed, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: G.E.’s giant machine, which can light up a small town, is stoking a renewable-energy arms race. Twirling above a strip of land at the mouth of Rotterdam’s harbor is a wind turbine so large it is difficult to photograph. The turning diameter of its rotor is longer than two American football fields end to end. Later models will be taller than any building on the mainland of Western Europe. Packed with sensors gathering data on wind speeds, electricity output and stresses on its components, the giant whirling machine in the Netherlands is a test model for a new series of giant offshore wind turbines planned by General Electric. When assembled in arrays, the wind machines have the potential to power cities, supplanting the emissions-spewing coal- or natural gas-fired plants that form the backbones of many electric systems today. G.E. has yet to install one of these machines in ocean water. ...But already the giant turbines have turned heads in the industry. ...an analyst said the machine’s size and advance sales had “shaken the industry.” ...The G.E. machines will have a generating capacity that would have been almost unimaginable a decade ago. A single one will be able to turn out 13 megawatts of power, enough to light up a town of roughly 12,000 homes. The turbine, which is capable of producing as much thrust as the four engines of a Boeing 747 jet, according to G.E., will be deployed at sea, where developers have learned that they can plant larger and more numerous turbines than on land to capture breezes that are stronger and more reliable....