The rotor star on GE Renewable Energy’s 12MW Haliade-X prototytpe is approaching completion, with the second of three record-setting 107-metre blades now bolted on to the offshore machine, which is about to begin trials in the Port of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands.
Once turning, the 220-metre-diameter rotor will capture wind to turn a direct-drive and permanent-magnet-generator transmission system with a 63% gross capacity factor, which, by GE’s calculations, will translate to $35-50m more revenue per unit over the life of a wind farm compared to the 10MW turbines currently being sold by rival OEMs.
GE last month landed the biggest prize to date in the global offshore wind industry with the Haliade-X: a preferred supplier agreement to deliver as many as 300 of the turbines for the giant 3.6GW Dogger Bank project being built off the UK by a developer consortium made up of Equinor and SSE.
The Dogger Bank deal came two weeks after the OEM’s breakout order for the giant turbine – which doubles the rated capacity of next biggest model, the 6MW Haliade 150 – for Danish developer Orsted's 120MW Skipjack and 1.1GW Ocean Wind projects in the US Atlantic. Both orders will be supplied out of GE’s Saint-Nazaire and Cherbourg factories in France.
In May, Swedish utility Vattenfall announced it would deploy Haliade-Xs on its projects in the North and Baltic Seas but stopped short of anointing GE Renewable Energy with preferred supplier status.
The giant turbine has also been mooted for the 720MW Asa Branca project off Brazil and the OEM recently unveiled plans to build a dedicated Haliade-X factory in China, to manufacture the machine for Asia-Pacific.
