This image shows Vestas wind turbines used at a facility in Russia.
Valery Matytsin | TASS | Getty Images
Vestas on Wednesday announced plans for a 15-megawatt (MW) wind turbine, with the Danish firm hoping to install a prototype next year before increasing production in 2024.
According to the Aarhus head office, the giant turbine V236-15.0 MW can produce about 80 gigawatt hours per year.
It claims that this would be enough to power about 20,000 European households, which would save more than 38,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide in the process.
Vestas is the latest company moving forward with the development of a large offshore wind turbine. GE Renewable Energy’s Haliade-X can be set at 12, 13 or 14 MW, while Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy is working on a 14 MW turbine which, if necessary, can also be increased to 15 MW.
As technology has evolved, the size of wind turbines has increased. In a recent report, the industry body WindEurope said that the average nominal capacity of turbines installed in Europe last year was 8.2 MW, an increase of 5% over 2019. Capacity refers to the maximum quantity that a turbine has can produce, not necessarily what it currently generates.
Vestas also released its 2020 annual report on Wednesday. The firm said profit for the year was 771 million euros ($ 934 million), slightly better than the 700 million euros it reported for 2019. Vestas’ revenue in 2020 reached 14.8 billion euros, an increase of 22% compared to 2019.
Henrik Andersen, CEO of CNBC, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Wednesday that he was pleased that the company was able to operate despite what he described as “challenging Covid-19 conditions.”
According to WindEurope, the European offshore wind sector invested more than 26 billion euros last year, a record amount.
The Brussels organization said in an announcement on Monday that the cash raised will fund a total of 7.1 gigawatts of offshore wind power, with projects to be developed and built in the next few years.