European Manufacturers Develop World’s Longest Wind Turbine

Adwen, a joint venture between wind turbine OEMs AREVA and Gamesa, partnered with long-time blade manufacturer LM Wind Power (Kolding, Denmark) to produce the longest blade in the world - 88.4 meters long. The blade has been specifically designed for Adwen's AD 8-180 wind turbine - the largest rotor in the industry (180 meters). The engineering teams of both companies have been working together for months to design and integrate a blade that represents an important step forward in the race to lower the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE). The blade design was also conceived with scalability in mind. "When you are building the largest wind turbine in the world, almost everything you do is an unprecedented challenge. We are going where no one else has ever gone before, pushing all the known frontiers in the industry. Having developed and integrated together with LM Wind Power the first unit of the longest blade ever and being able to start testing is a key step forward in the development of our AD 8-180 and proves that Adwen is at the forefront of the industry", says Luis Álvarez, Adwen General Manager. According to LM Wind Power’s website, the company constructs the majority of their blades from a pure glass fiber and polyester matrix. They add that for each blade, they apply composite resins to their products and map out the properties of the different applied materials to understand how the different elements in their composite materials work together and how blades perform under real life conditions. “The LM 88.4 P blade is an extraordinary example of industrialized innovation at record-breaking scale. It is based on innovation building blocks, rooted in 35 years of real life experience, in the design, technology and manufacturing of ultra-long, reliable blades,” said LM Wind Power’s CEO, Marc de Jong.