Vestas blade plays the long game

An 80-metre Vestas blade ‘bagged up’ for fabrication; West Medina Mills, Isle of Wight

By Darius Snieckus

 Thursday, February 07 2013

A crew of Vestas engineers in white clean-suits inch their way along the mould for what will be the world’s longest wind turbine blade, guided by a grid of razor-thin green laser beams, hunting for minuscule flaws in the laminate.

This high-tech prototype 80-metre blade — being fabricated at Vestas’ West Medina Mills R&D centre on the Isle of Wight, off southern England — has been under development for more than two years, soaking up a large amount of the company’s annual €300m-400m ($400m-533m) spend on R&D.

The new blade is destined for Vestas’ 8MW V164 turbine, the machine specially designed for the coming round of wind-power mega-developments in Northern Europe’s hostile waters.

The road to first fabrication has not been smooth. Vestas launched the V164 to great fanfare in March 2011,…

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