The world’s largest wind turbine is now the Enercon E-126 installed in Emden, Germany by Enercon. The Enercon E-126 turbine has a rotor blade width of 126 meters (413 feet) and is a more sophisticated version of the E-112, formerly the world’s largest wind turbine and rated at 6 megawatts. This new turbine is officially rated at 6 megawatts too, but will mostly likely produce 7+ megawatts (or 20 million kilowatt hours per year). That’s enough to power about 5,000 households of four in Europe. A quick US calculation would be 938 kwh per home per month, 12 months, that’s 11,256 kwh per year per house. That’s 1776 American homes on one wind turbine.
Enercon will be testing several types of storage systems in combination with the multi-megawatt wind turbines. These turbines are equipped with a number of new features: an optimized blade design with a spoiler extending down to the hub, and a pre-cast concrete base.
Due to the elevated hub height and the new blade profile, the performance of the E-126 is expected to by far surpass that of the E-112. At the Rysumer Nacken site, the annual yield has been forecast at over 18 million kilowatt hours - enough to provide more than 4500 households with green power.
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