Danish wind turbine blade manufacturer LM Glasfiber has signed its first major contract for delivery of a completely new type of blade for 1.5 MW wind turbines which can extract up to 5% more energy from the wind than standard 40.3 metre blades, reports professional journal Ingeniøren (The Engineer). The customer is the Chinese wind turbine manufacturer Envision Energy. As a result of the deal, LM Glasfiber will establish a fourth factory in China – on the Yangtze River in Jiangyin – to produce the new 42.1 metre blade.
The new blade is 42.1 metres long and will initially be produced in China at one of LM Glasfiber’s existing factories in the country. Under the terms of the contract, the new blades will be supplied for at least 1,333 of Envision Energy’s 1.5 MW wind turbine.
LM Glasfiber’s new blade has been designed according to the plug-and-play principle, so that when blades need to be replaced on existing 1.5 MW wind turbines, it will be easy to exchange them with the new higher efficiency blade, whose performance has been documented in tests conducted in LM Glasfiber’s own wind tunnel.
Envision Energy has just announced that it is opening a knowledge and research centre in Denmark, making it the first Chinese player in the wind energy industry to establish a presence in Denmark. The new centre is also Envision Energy’s first facility to be placed outside China.
