General Electric reports it has a contract to supply 41 wind turbines for four projects being developed in Germany by Energiekontor AG. The value of the order is not known, but GE said the turbines would be capable of producing 250 million kilowatts of electricity annually, which would be equivalent to the demand of more than 70,000 homes.
Energiekontor has developed and operates 79 wind farms across the EU, representing investments of almost $1 billion and consisting of nearly 450 turbines. Its generating capacity (including projects planned for third-party operators) is reported at 515 MW annually.
“As these new projects illustrate, GE continues to invest in the future of the wind industry in Germany and across Europe,” stated Stephan Ritter, general manager of GE Renewable Energy Europe. “We are able to use GE’s vast resources across several business and technology sectors, including nearly 13,000 engineers throughout GE Energy and the GE Research Center in Munich. In today’s environment, having such global scale provides us with a significant competitive advantage and further enhances our capabilities to meet the diverse requirements of our customers in Europe and worldwide.”
Seven of the turbines will be commissioned next year in North Rhine-Westphalia, and 34 will be installed near Cuxhaven, on the North Sea. Energiekontor is a developer of the project, and also booked GE for a wind-service agreement that includes extended supply of spare parts and service for maintenance, routine inspections, and remote monitoring. GE technicians will perform regular on-site service, troubleshooting, and “fault rectification.”
The 41 turbines to be supplied will be GE Energy’s 2.75-103 model, a proprietary design rated as achieving a 9% increase in average electricity-generating potential over the previous model (2.5-100), at a wind speed of 7.5 m/sec. They will be outfitted with 50.2-meter blades that achieve a larger “swept area” to generate more electricity more efficiently. Each turbine will be installed atop a 98.3-meter-high tower, and feature a rotor diameter of 103 meters.
“GE is meeting the project’s strict noise control regulation requirements by using optimized trailing-edge serrations on its 2.75-103 range wind turbines,” explained Peter Szabo, managing director of Energiekontor. “The technical design of these high-performance wind generators with their low noise emission levels is one of the main reasons we have chosen GE as our project partner.”
