Siemens Gamesa launches new mega-turbine
From: Kathrin Witsch
Last year, the competitor GE caused a stir with its 12-megawatt turbine. Now the wind company Siemens Gamesa is going one better. Design of the new turbine by Siemens GamesaEach of the three rotor blades is 108 meters long, exactly one meter longer than GE's previous record holder.There is only one way for wind turbines at sea: upwards. The turbines are getting bigger and bigger, higher and higher, more and more powerful. For three years now, turbine manufacturers have been making wild announcements. In 2018, the Danes from Vestas took the lead with their 10-megawatt turbine, only to be outdone shortly afterwards by the Americans at GE with 12 megawatts. Now the German-Spanish team around Siemens Gamesa is overtaking its competitors.The new SG-14 turbine is to run on the high seas with a 14-megawatt output. The first prototype will be completed as early as next year. "It is the next generation of offshore wind turbines and a plant for the world market," says Pierre Bauer, Managing Director of Siemens Gamesa Germany and CFO for the Offshore division, in an interview with Handelsblatt. After all, he says, the company is on a growth path.A total of 5500 wind turbines are currently turning in the world's oceans, two thirds of them in Europe. In contrast to the business with wind power on land, the projects in the sea are usually larger, but there are significantly fewer of them. The competition is tough. But the potential of offshore wind power is much greater. Over the next twenty years, the International Energy Agency estimates that the offshore wind power business is set to reach a volume of over USD 1.3 trillion and offshore wind power will become one of the world's largest sources of electricity. In Germany, the first offshore wind turbine was installed ten years ago. In the meantime, the Federal Republic with its 1300 wind turbines is the second largest offshore market in the world after Great Britain. Unlike their small relatives on land, the wind turbines off the coast are not only much more powerful, but also larger and more expensive. This also applies to the new Siemens turbine. Each of the three rotor blades is 108 meters long, exactly one meter longer than GE's previous record holder.This brings the new generation of turbines to a total diameter of 220 meters. And Bauer is convinced that there is still room for improvement in terms of performance. "If you had asked a developer four years ago whether a turbine with 14 megawatts would be feasible in 2020, the answer would have been no. But there is always more to it."But the SG-14 is not scheduled for market until 2024, when GE, with its 12 MW turbine, will have a head start. It will go into series production as early as the end of next year and, with a few adjustments, could even be increased to almost 14 megawatts, according to GE. In any case, Bauer is certain that the next mega-turbine from the competition will not be long in coming.Corona makes for red figuresAlthough the Siemens Energy subsidiary only recently had to scale back its forecasts for the current year due to the global corona pandemic, the wind giant's Germany manager is confident. "In the offshore sector, we sometimes have 3-6 years development time for products and projects. Many components were therefore available and we have not experienced any significant restrictions. Regionally, the supply chains were affected differently, so in the onshore market things looked different in some cases," says Bauer. Especially in the southern European countries, but also in the USA and Asia, many projects came to a standstill for the time being due to corona restrictions.As in the first quarter, the offshore market leader did not make it out of the loss zone in the second. On balance, the wind turbine manufacturer lost EUR 165 million, after a profit of EUR 49 million in the previous year. In the first half of the year, the losses thus totalled EUR 339 million. However, competitors Vestas and Nordex are also in the red because of Corona.Therefore it is now all the more important that the Federal Government puts its announcements into practice, Bauer demands. "The restriction on the expansion of offshore wind must go. This is optional if we want to achieve our climate targets," he says, alluding to the so-called offshore cap.According to the plan from Berlin, 15 gigawatts of wind power should actually be installed at sea by 2030. Only last week, however, the coastal states of Lower Saxony, Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein agreed with the transmission system operators and the federal government after months of wrangling to extend the expansion limit to 20 gigawatts by 2030.
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