China is building the world’s biggest wind turbine in the middle of the ocean — and it’s nearly 70 stories tall



Jill Ettinger
Thu, June 22, 2023 

A new offshore wind project coming to China will be the biggest one built to date, measuring as tall as a 70-story building, Design Boom reported.

MingYang, the largest private wind turbine manufacturer in China, has announced the launch of the MySE 18.X-28X — and it says it’s the largest wind turbine on the planet.

While bigger is not always better, that just may be the case here, says MingYang. The MySE 18.X-28X will have a swept area of more than 700,000 square feet (66,052 square meters), according to New Atlas, meaning a single blade on the turbine slices through an area of sky about the size of nine football fields in length.

The turbine will be capable of handling “the most extreme ocean conditions,” including typhoons, and will produce enough energy every year to supply power for nearly 100,000 people.

MingYang wrote in a LinkedIn post that it hopes the massive turbine can help increase its energy output while reducing the cost associated with installing multiple, smaller turbines by an estimated $120,000 to $150,000.

The MySE18.X-28X won’t just provide a significant source of energy for thousands of homes and businesses in China — it will also reduce carbon pollution by more than 66,000 tons over conventional energy production methods, like burning dirty energy sources.

China is the planet’s biggest polluting country, producing about 14% of total global planet-overheating gas pollution in 2021, according to Our World In Data.

And the new turbine is aligned with China’s 2060 target to achieve net-zero emissions.

“With the new MySE 18.X-28X, Mingyang has taken a major step toward accelerating the green energy transition by driving [cost of electricity] reductions and technological breakthroughs for the offshore wind industry,” wrote the company.