General Electric has built a monster wind turbine in the Netherlands.
The test model stands above a strip of land at the mouth of Rotterdam’s harbor, according to The New York Times. The diameter of its rotor is longer than two football fields end to end. The newspaper noted that later models are expected to be taller than any building on the mainland of Western Europe.
The prototype in the Netherlands is filled with sensors gathering data on wind speeds and electricity output.
The turbines, when assembled in arrays, will have the potential to light up cities. A single one will be able to generate 13 megawatts of power, enough to light up a town of roughly 12,000 homes, the Times noted.
The eventual plan calls for the turbines to be installed in the ocean, where developers can plan more numerous turbines to capture sea breezes.
Still, questions are being raised about how quickly G.E. can build and install hundreds of these turbines.
And some experts predict the wind machines will reach a point where bigger turbines may not be realistic from an economic standpoint.
“We will also reach a plateau; we just don’t know where it is yet,” said Morten Pilgaard Rasmussen, chief technology officer of the offshore wind unit of Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy.
The Times noted that the rush is on to build the monster machines as the G.E. turbine is selling better than its rivals may have anticipated, according to analysts.
During the last presidential debate in October, President Donald Trump attacked wind turbines and claimed they kill “all the birds.”
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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