GE Renewable Energy’s Haliade-X offshore wind turbine has been named one of the “Best Inventions of 2019” by Time magazine, along with a panoply of new technologies that include talking hearing aids, GPS bike navigation systems and fully recyclable running shoes.

The award, said GE, was “not only a testament to the unparalleled power of the Haliade-X but also demonstrates the overall growth and increasingly mainstream nature of offshore wind”.

Time said: “As temperatures rise, political pressure has grown to move the world toward clean energy. GE’s Haliade-X offshore wind turbine offers one piece of the puzzle. This [technnology] is a significant advance: when it comes to offshore wind, bigger often means better.”

The OEM’s 12MW prototype of the Haliade-X reached switch-on recently in the Dutch Port of Rotterdam, with component testing ongoing at the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult’s facility in Blyth, UK, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center in Boston, US

The turbine, which flies an LM Wind Power-designed 220-metre-diameter rotor powering a direct-drive transmission with permanent-magnet generator, is the largest offshore machine ever built, outreaching the 10MW models of OEMs MHI Vestas and Siemens Gamesa, though both rivals have larger-nameplate designs in development.

The Haliade-X, the launch of which in March 2018 was reported exclusively in Recharge, is engineered to generate up to 67GWh of gross annual energy production, enough to supply power to over 16,000 European households and save up to 42,000 metric tonnes of CO ₂ .

GE is racing to get the Haliade-X into serial manufacture, with orders for the Equinor-SEE 3.6GW Dogger Bank mega-project off the UK and Orsted’s Skipjack and Ocean Wind developments in the US in line for first deliveries between 2022-2025.

Wind

GE Haliade-X picked by Time as one of world's best inventions