World’s Largest Offshore Wind Turbine Successfully Grid-Connected

Envision Energy announced the successful grid connection of the world’s most powerful offshore wind turbine, the EN-256/16.7 prototype. Deep-sea conditions are notoriously demanding, necessitating reliability from high-capacity wind turbines. The EN-256/16.7 has emerged from Envision Energy’s extensive in-house research and development, with innovations specifically tailored for deep-sea scenarios from manufacturing, delivery, installation, transportation, and operation. The deep-sea environment poses challenges to the reliability and cost of various aspects of large wind turbine transportation, installation, and maintenance.

Envision Energy considered many challenges in the offshore turbine model design phase, such as shortages of offshore wind turbine maintenance vessels, high costs, unstable ship schedules, and long component replacement cycles. The product employs modular design and reserves self-developed tooling interfaces, requiring only simple tools to complete component replacements such as external cooling core bodies and transformer windings. Modular subcontracting and pre-assembly strategies also free the turbine from constraints related to transportation routes and port capacities, enabling delivery in diverse scenarios. Envision Energy said that this approach effectively addresses challenges associated with transporting and loading large turbines while minimizing offshore operational time and enhancing installation efficiency.