Giant wind turbines with blades length of football pitch launched

Manufacturer says 20 of these turbines would power a city size of Liverpool for a year

A new wind turbine with blades nearly the length of a football pitch has been unveiled in the hopes it will help power the next wave of renewable energy production.

The model, which could boost electricity generation by up to 30 per cent compared to its predecessors, represents a trend of rapid turbine growth within the industry.

Manufacturer Siemens Gamesa said the new turbine, with its 94m-long blades, will be on the market within three years.

The company claims an offshore wind development with 20 of these turbines would be enough to power a city the size of Liverpool for a year.

They intend to keep the time to market short by reusing components from previous generations of turbines.

The SG 10.0-193 DD model has a power rating of 10 megawatts, making it one of the most powerful ever proposed.

However, the turbine was beaten to the double digits power level in September when competing company MHI Vestas announced its first 10MW model.

All the wind farms currently under construction in the UK are using turbines with a capacity of around 7MW.

The largest British turbines are two 8.8MW structures off the Aberdeen coast, which Donald Trump spent years trying to block due to their proximity to his golf course.

According to trade association RenewableUK, the average capacity of an offshore turbine has grown over 50 per cent from 3.7MW in 2012 to 5.8MW in 2018.

The escalating arms race to create ever-larger wind turbines is partly responsible for the reduction in price of renewable power that has taken place, with developers halving their costs in four years.

After Hitachi backed out of a proposed nuclear project in Wales on Thursday, business secretary Greg Clark acknowledged how the plummeting cost of renewables was making it harder to find support for other energy projects.

He also noted that it is likely wind power will soon require no government subsidies to construct.