Chinese Sany installs 15 MW onshore wind turbine

A Chinese firm has installed what it calls the world’s largest onshore wind turbine. Sany Group, a multinational firm known for its heavy equipment manufacturing, announced on Oct. 9 that a 15 MW wind turbine has been commissioned at a plant in Tongyu, Jilin Province, China.

Sany said the turbine is a prototype and will be tested over the next year to “thoroughly verify” its reliability. The company said the SI-270150 wind turbine is the largest onshore wind turbine in terms of single-unit capacity, and also has the largest rotor diameter (270 meters) of all onshore wind turbines installed worldwide to date.
Sany said the turbine has a design life of 25 to 30 years. The turbine blade is 131 meters long. The company said the SI-270150 features “a lightweight design and intelligent load reduction technologies, which reduce the overall load and facilitate long-distance land transportation.” The drivetrain includes an integrated main shaft support system with double tapered roller bearings, or TRBs, which helps ensure high load capacity and stability, according to the company.


The first 131-meter-long blade rolled off the production line at the Bayannur Smart Industrial Park in January this year, Sany officials said. The company has said that as blade length increases, “the requirements for stiffness and strength are also higher, otherwise problems such as stall and classical vibration could occur, resulting in increased vibration, even blade breakage. To address these challenges, by adopting an optimized aerodynamic design with a large thickness and a blunt trailing edge, the overall absolute thickness of SANY RE’s SY1310A wind turbine blade is significantly improved.”

The company said it has introduced several new technologies into the blade manufacturing process. Sany said these include “self-designed glass fiber pre-quilting technology, long-distance automatic infusion technology for large and composite blades, and three-dimensional design technology for trailing edge blind joint insertion, etc., transforming traditional manual manufacturing into intelligent manufacturing and improving lean production with digital intelligence. In addition, recyclable polyurethane structural parts are also adopted to improve the recyclability of ultra-long blades.”

Chinese companies have already deployed the world’s largest offshore wind turbines, as well as the largest floating offshore wind platform.