Taller, faster, better, stronger: wind towers are only getting bigger

Former Australian Greens leader Bob Brown made headlines this week after he objected to a proposed wind farm on Tasmania’s Robbins Island. The development would see 200 towers built, each standing 270 metres from base to the tip of their blades. 

Wind towers are getting taller. 

Leaving aside the question of the Robbins Island development, these will be extraordinarily tall towers. However, they fit right in with the current trend for wind turbines. 

Wind turbines come in many designs, but the most common is the so-called “horizontal axis” kind, which look like giant fans on poles. This type of turbine is highly efficient at turning the energy in the wind into electrical energy.

Keen observers will have noticed that these turbines have been gaining in size over the years. In the 1990s, wind turbines typically had hub heights and rotor diameters of the order of 30m. Today, hub heights and rotor diameters are pushing well past 100m.

Read the story from The Conversation by a professor from the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University 0of New South Wales, Con Doolan -  “Taller, faster, better, stronger: wind towers are only getting bigger.”

New super tall low-wind turbine tipped for Australia

One of the largest turbines in the world could soon be swinging its blades on an Australia wind farm.

The new turbines can provide 30 per cent
more power than turbines such as those
at the Ararat wind farm. 

The new turbine, developed by engineering giant GE, stands 240 metres tall from the ground to the tip of its rotors. That compares to an average tip height in current wind farms of between 130 metres and 160 metres tall.

Australia, with 77-metre long carbon blades requiring less wind speed to turn.

The output is also greater with the turbines able to provide up to 30 per cent more power than those in use at facilities like AGL's Silverton wind farm.

Read Cole Latimer’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “New super tall low-wind turbine tipped for Australia.”