GE are about to unveil a new turbine which will target class II wind locations, such as those in Brazil. It will be known as the 2.2-107 model and will provide a 12% increase in capacity factor and 33% increase in power output compared with the GE 1.85-82.5 model. GE also announced that they were increasing their turbine blades from 77 metres to 91 metres. The extension increases the swept area of the rotor by 40% and, according to GE, boosts energy production by more than a fifth.
There are currently two prototypes of the new turbine that have been operating for the last ten months with Noble Environmental Power at Noble’s Clinton Wind Park in Clinton, New York.
Finally GE launched “GE Predictvity”, a wind project wake management software which should be able to recapture lost output at a wind farm that occurs when the turbines “wake” in other words, begin to respond to a suitable strength of wind. This is to be achieved by balancing performance and loads across the entire wind farm. GE say the application will improve a wind farm’s output by as much as 5-10%.
GE will commission or start construction on 2.8GW of wind turbines during this and next year in the US, it announced today at the American Wind Energy Association’s Windpower 2014 conference in Las Vegas.
The company said that its firm turbine orders have totalled 3.9GW in the US since 1 January 2013, the date of the latest extension of the production tax credit. In May 2013, the manufacturer only had 1GW of orders in the US.
Anne McEntee, pictured above, the president and CEO of GE’s renewable energy business said:
“We feel confident that, with our strong backlog of orders, we are strongly positioned for 2014 and 2015.”
The first order for the GE 2.2-107 “Brilliant” wind turbine was secured from Omega Energia in the A-5 Brazil energy auction on December 13, 2013. 32 have been ordered. The turbine is an evolution of GE’s 1.5-megawatt series of turbines and is well suited for Brazil’s wind regime. As part of the contract, GE will provide the operations and maintenance on the 32 turbines for 10 years.
GE has been in operation in Brazil since 1919 and today employs more than 8,500 people in the country.
