Offshore Wind–We’re Talkin’ BIG

The Netherlands recently installed an offshore wind turbine with a capacity of 12 MW, sufficient to power 30,000 homes. Its blades are the length of footballs fields, and it stands almost as tall as the Eiffel Tower.

The cost-engineering of onshore wind places a certain limit to their size, perhaps 6 MW.  This isn’t the case with offshore, as the cost of mooring anything is so intense, and goes up relatively little when the size increases.  Look for these puppies to keep get bigger, especially as materials science continues to improve.