GE provides new turbine to Scotland

GE Energy has received its first order for its new 2.75 megawatt plant in northern Europe. The company will supply nine turbines in the Little Raith Wind Farm in Scotland. The installation should be completed in 2012.

Little Raith is located in the county of Fife and it is operated by Kennedy Renewables. With an installed capacity of 24.75 megawatts from nine turbines the wind farm will provide a contribution to reducing CO2 emissions in the county by a quarter of 2013 . Scotland will get its power from renewable sources completely by 2020.

The 2.75 megawatt plant is the latest product in multi-megawatt range of the company. It offers in comparison to the previous model at 2.5 megawatts which a nine percent increase in energy yield. Profound technical changes for it not needed to be performed. The company has adapted primarily in the cable and transformer tower and increased the current density in the transformer. "Now we require the inverter transformer and more energy," said Stephen Knight, Head of European Operations for renewable energy at GE Energy. This approach was possible because the technology would provide reserves that would never be used up. After several years of operation, the company knew that it could increase performance beyond the turbines. This cable and transformers had been the limiting factors. The most important innovation for more power is the new blade. It has a sawtooth pattern on the wing trailing edge, which is to optimize the loads and noise significantly. Hub heights from 75.85 to 98 meters are possible.

The turbines for Scotland is a strong-wind version with a rotor diameter of 100 meters. A first version of weak wind of 2.75-103 megawatt plant. It was the beginning of the year of the wind farm. The Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands, in Wieringermeer near the IJsselmeer has been picked. The different versions will be able to offer the GE plants for different locations and local government regulations.

In July, GE had already sold the first plants of the new turbine to the Turkish energy supplier Enerjisa. Balikesir in cash will be the largest wind farm in Turkey with 52 plants with a total of 142.5 megawatts will be built and provide electricity for around 40,000 households. Turkey also wants to increase wind energy production by 2020 to 20,000 megawatts. So far, almost half of Turkish electricity is produced on the basis of imported natural gas, although the country is considered ideal for wind energy utilization. According to estimates by GE, it has a potential wind energy capacity of around 48,000 megawatts, 1,400 megawatts.