..this is a wind turbine blade – and it weighs as much as four bull elephants.
Siemens has constructed what are to date the world’s largest rotor blades for wind turbines. Measuring 75 metres in length and weighing 25 tonnes, the B75 blade is part of Siemens new 6MW wind turbine, the SWT-6.0-154.
The rotor of the SWT-6.0-120 has a diameter of 154 meters and a swept area of 18,600 square meters – around the size of two and a half soccer fields.
The tips of the blades of the SWT-6.0-154 move at up to 80 metres per second, or 290 kilometres per hour; extracting energy from 200 tons of air per second. The company says the B75 blade is the world’s largest fibreglass component cast in one piece
Transporting the massive blade over 320 kilometres to a wind farm in Østerild, Denmark was a tricky process. A truck cranking 680 horsepower was used, travelling at a top speed 67 km/h.
Siemens wind turbines have evolved dramatically over the past three decades. The company’s first commercial wind turbine had a capacity of 30 kW and 5 meter long rotor blades. Siemens says energy capture area and capacity of its turbines have grown by a factor of 200 in the last 30 years.
In other Siemens related news (and closer to home), the company has announced it has received an order for 90 gearless SWT-3.0 wind turbines with a combined capacity of 270 megawatts for the Snowtown II Wind Farm in South Australia.
Snowtown II is expected to be capable of generating enough power to supply around 180,000 SA homes when it is operational by end 2014.
Stage 1 of Snowtown Wind Farm was completed in 2008 and generates enough electricity to supply nearly 70,000 average South Australian households.
While South Australia is the nation’s wind power stronghold; not all major projects proposed are making it to prime-time. ABC News is reporting TruEnergy’s proposed Stony Gap wind farm, near Burra in South Australia’s mid-north, has been given the thumbs down by Goyder Council’s Development Assessment Panel.
