Hull’s offshore wind turbine blade plant stands ready to deliver after Siemens Gamesa unveiled its next generation model.
The renewable energy giant is scaling up again, and with the city’s plant having already provided the blades for the largest farm to be built - and its forthcoming successor - Hornsea One and Hornsea Two.
Now Siemens Gamesa is bringing forward a 14MW direct drive turbine, with potential to reach 15MW. It will use 108-metre long blades.
The first turbines to be installed off the Humber were 3MW, with the entire rotation diameter smaller than the blades that will be added to the huge offshore structures.
First off the Hull production line were 75m blades, for Race Bank, with a team of more than 1,000 now employed.
Andy Sykes, plant director at Green Port Hull, said: “Hull and the Humber remain at the centre of operations for 海角视频 blade manufacturing, offshore pre-assembly and offshore service.
“Siemens Gamesa’s wind turbine blade factory in Hull now has a proven track record having provided blades for the world’s largest wind farms. Although the sector moves forward at pace, we have shown we are able to adapt. We did this last year when we seamlessly transformed the factory layout to start making larger 81 metre blades, six metres bigger than those previously manufactured.
"We’re extremely proud of the team, their recent resilience and ‘can-do’ attitude and, of course, their world-leading expertise.
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“Our future production pipeline takes into consideration a number of factors and decisions are made in conjunction with our Siemens Gamesa sister factories. It’s too early to say where the SG 14-222 turbine will be made but we are certainly in a great place to make it happen if required.”
It is so named as it has a 222-metre rotor diameter. It brings a 25 per cent uplift in annual energy production compared to the predecessor machine.
Siemens Gamesa said a 'light' 500-tonne nacelle weight enables an optimised substructure at lower cost, with the prototype to be ready in 2021, and commercial availability scheduled for 2024.
“We’ve gone bigger for the better,” said Markus Tacke, chief executive of Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, revealing it on Tuesday, May 19.
“Safely and sustainably providing clean energy for our customers and society-at-large is at the core of all we do. The new SG 14-222 DD is a global product which allows all of us take giant steps towards protecting and preserving our planet.
“We ourselves became carbon neutral in late 2019 and are on track towards meeting our long-term ambition of net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050. Our installed fleet of over 100GW both offshore and onshore abates more than 260 million tons of CO2 emissions annually.”
It comes as plans have been revealed on the Humber for offshore wind to power green hydrogen production at scale, with Orsted's Hornsea One and Two plugging into the grid at North Killingholme, neighbouring the South Bank refining cluster.