LM Wind Power is the world’s largest independent manufacturer of wind turbine blades and has pioneered many of those important and exciting innovations. The company has created longer and longer blades increasing the ‘swept area’ of the rotor and capturing the wind more effectively. This new blade will be the longest composite blade structure in the world at 73.5 metres - equivalent to a 24-storey building - creating an impressive swept area with a rotor diameter of 150 metres.
LM Wind Power’s new wind turbine blade for offshore wind farms was developed by the company’s specialist engineers in Denmark. This experienced team has produced more than 140,000 blades which are now installed and flying across the world. When the company began in 1978 the blades were five metres long which illustrates the speed and ambition of the whole industry and the constant appetite for improved technology at LM Wind Power. The company was the first to exceed the 60 metre limit and is now the first to put blades longer than 70 metres into production.
Vice President, Product Development at LM Wind Power, Jan Kristiansen is looking forward to being able to present the first prototype blade in Denmark already at the end of this year. “The size of these impressive structures has more than doubled over the past decade alone, and although this has of course demanded the development of new materials, design and technology along the way, the new 73.5 metre blade is built on our progressive accumulation of know-how. This ensures that even though it is more than ten metres longer than our recent world record blade, it is still based on a proven concept.”
The LM 73.5P wind turbine blades will be installed on Alstom’s 6-MW wind turbines offshore, mainly in European waters, where the giant blades will travel at the speed of more than 320 km/h in order to generate green power equivalent to the yearly requirements of over 6,000 European households.
“Speed to market is important in the fast-moving wind energy industry. In order to make the best possible blade available to our customers with least delay, our product development and manufacturing engineers have to work very closely together - as one team. One example is the way our in-house mold experts have produced a special prototype mold with a transparent surface. This allows for full-scale manufacturing trials where our engineers are able to follow the critical polyester infusion by visual inspection,” Jan Kristiansen explains.
LM Wind Power continues its steady technological development and is already in discussions with a number of Asian wind turbine manufacturers about making blades even longer than 80 metres – reaffirming that wind power works.
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