Mingyang Smart Energy‘s MySE 16-260, the world’s largest offshore wind turbine, is now operating at full capacity – and it just withstood Typhoon Talim.

The Chinese wind turbine maker announced yesterday that its MySE 16-260 was commissioned on a LinkedIn post. The 16 MW offshore wind turbine, which is at the Mingyang Qingzhou 4 offshore wind farm in the South China Sea, has a rotor of 260 meters (853 feet) and a swept area of 53,902 square meters (580,196 square feet). 

The MySE 16-260 can produce 67 million kWh of power annually, enough for an astonishing 80,000 households, reducing CO2 by 56,000 tonnes.

It’s knocked Goldwind’s 16 MW offshore wind turbine, which came online in June, out of the “world’s largest” spot. Goldwind’s turbine has a rotor diameter of 252 meters (827 feet) and a swept area of 50,000 square meters (538,195 square feet).

Mingyang says that the MySE 16-260 is able to withstand extreme wind speeds of 79.8 meters per second (178.5 miles per hour). It was put to the test this week as Typhoon Talim hit China’s Guangdong Province on Monday. Mingyang CTO Qiying Zhang said just before Talim hit, in a LinkedIn post shared today:

Most of China’s coastal areas are in typhoon zones, and if there is no wind turbine that can withstand typhoons, it can be said that wind power has little future in China.

Typhoon Talim packed a punch, with maximum winds of 136.8 km per hour (85 mph). According to China’s state news agency Xinhua, nearly 230,000 people in Guangdong were evacuated on Monday.

Mingyang today said that “Mingyang’s pilot offshore installation models, the MySE 16-260, MySE 5.5-155 (floating), and MySE 7.25-158 (floating), emerged unharmed.”

Offshore wind turbine manufacturers keep producing larger and larger prototypes because huge turbines increase energy capacity, creating economies of scale that drive the cost of energy per megawatt-hour down.

Photo: Mingyang Smart Energy

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