Construction of the world’s tallest wind turbine has reached its final, mammoth height of 365 metres in Germany this week, combining a wind turbine atop a 167-metre-tall lattice tower.
Engineering company Gicon has been building the high-altitude wind turbine tower this year, after being commissioned to do so by Germany’s Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation. The tower and turbine have been designed to take advantage of stronger and more consistent winds at higher altitudes.
Gicon expects the new high-altitude turbine to generate approximately twice as much energy as a conventional wind turbine with the same rotor diameter installed at a more traditional height.
A video published by Gicon gives an insight into the scale and construction of the project – but viewers who are unnerved or afraid of heights should only watch peering through their fingers.
The turbine being installed is only 3.8-megawatt (MW), but Gicon predicts that units of 8 MW and above will eventually be able to be installed, each capable of generating up to 33-gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity per year.
Construction of the main tower structure was completed in July, measuring 167 metres in height. With the actual wind turbine now installed atop the massive steel structure, the turbine’s hub height measures in at 300 metres, and reaches to 365 metres at the tip of the rotor blades.
“365 meters – this is an overwhelming moment for our entire team,” said Prof. Dr. Jochen Großmann, founder and CEO of Gicon.
“What was long a challenging idea and then an equally challenging construction project now stands as a globally unique facility in Schipkau.
The tower was built combining both an outer structure and a “telescopic” inner tower – a different version of what Fortescue is seeking to do in the Pilbara with the “self lifting” tower technology developed by Nabrawind. This allows the inner tower to be hydraulically jacked up through and secured to the outer framework.
This was necessary as there are no cranes tall enough to install a wind turbine atop a 300-metre tower, so the turbine had to be installed atop the inner tower before being jacked up.
Built in a region of Germany that was once dominated by coal mining, the new high-altitude tower and turbine are now not only the world’s tallest wind turbine, but also just three metres short of being Germany’s tallest structure – behind only Berlin’s 368-metre television tower.
The announcement comes only a couple of weeks after Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas announced that it had installed a conventional onshore wind turbine in Germany with the world’s tallest high height of 199 metres.
Vestas would likely suggest that comparing their EnVentus V172-7.2 MW turbine milestone with that achieved by Gicon as comparing apples to oranges, given that their 7.2 MW turbine is installed atop a standard turbine tower.
