GE Renewable Energy and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) have welcomed a 107-meter blade that will undergo a series of fatigue tests at MassCEC’s Wind Technology Testing Center (WTTC) in Boston.
This blade is set to be integrated with the GE Haliade-X 12MW machine: the most powerful offshore wind turbine in the industry.
The testing will involve moving the blade millions of times over the period of a few months to validate that it can withstand more than 25 years of operation at sea. The testing is part of the process of commercializing the Haliade-X 12 MW turbine by 2021.
The Haliade-X platform has been the selected as preferred turbine for nearly 5 GW of offshore projects.
“We think the Haliade-X is the right turbine at the right time as the offshore industry globally and particularly here in the U.S. is poised to take off,” says GE Chairman and CEO H. Lawrence Culp Jr. “We’re proud Boston is part of this effort, and we appreciate the work the commonwealth has put forth in laying out the roadmap by which Massachusetts can be a leading developer and user of offshore wind technology.”
The WTTC offers a full suite of certification tests for turbine blade sections up to 90 meters in length. WTTC also offers the latest wind turbine blade testing and prototype development methodologies to help the wind industry deploy the next generation of offshore and land-based wind turbine technologies. Since opening in 2011, WTTC has run 35 distinct blade testing programs entailing hundreds of individual blade tests.
