\n<\/p>\n
November 11, 2025<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
The World\u2019s Largest Wind Turbine Will Smash Previous Records<\/p>\n
A planned supersized floating wind turbine with two spinning heads will generate nearly double the amount of energy as the current record-holder<\/p>\n
By You Xiaoying edited by Andrea Thompson<\/span><\/p>\n Ming Yang\u2019s 16-MW OceanX twin turbine arrives at Yangjiang Qingzhou IV Offshore Wind Farm in the ocean off Guangdong Province, China.<\/p>\n Ming Yang Smart Energy Group<\/p>\n The world\u2019s largest wind turbine\u2014currently being tested off the coast of China\u2014has blades that are more than twice as long as a Boeing 777\u2019s wingspan. It can generate 26 megawatts (MW) of energy, more than double the global average for individual turbines. But its record is about to be smashed to smithereens: another offshore wind turbine that is twice as powerful has been announced by Ming Yang Smart Energy, a company based in southern China.<\/p>\n With a capacity of 50 MW, this supersized structure is designed to float on the ocean\u2019s surface and can withstand typhoons, according to the company, which plans to start making the turbine later this year and to deploy it next year.<\/p>\n Though Western manufacturers such as Siemens Gamesa are also pushing for bigger and bigger turbines, the trend has been particularly dominant in China after the government stopped subsidizing offshore wind farms in 2022, forcing developers to find ways to save money. Using bigger turbines means that fewer of them will be needed to generate the same amount of power, says Zhu Ronghua, director of Yangjiang Offshore Wind Energy Laboratory, a research institute supported by the provincial government of Guangdong in China. \u201cYou can save on transport, construction and installation fees, which account for 70 to 80 percent of the cost of building an offshore wind farm,\u201d Zhu says.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n In general, a turbine with a larger capacity is also physically bigger. This is because you need longer blades to catch more wind and generate more electricity per sweep. The current record-holding turbine, made by Dongfang Electric, is so enormous that its tower is as tall as a 63-story skyscraper.<\/p>\n But Ming Yang is taking a different approach: Its megamachine will have not one but two sets of engines and blades, each capable of generating 25 MW of energy. They are supported by a Y-shaped tower on a single platform. Each of its blades is 145 meters long, roughly three times the height of the Statue of Liberty. The design builds on that of the world\u2019s first twin-headed turbine, a 16-MW version that is currently operating in the South China Sea, and combines the output of two turbines in one. \u201cIf successful [at this scale], this model can be a game changer in the floating wind industry,\u201d says Umang Mehrotra, an offshore wind analyst at the Norwegian research firm Rystad Energy.<\/p>\n Han Yujia, a researcher of renewable energy at the California-based nonprofit Global Energy Monitor, is most impressed that Ming Yang intends to increase a turbine\u2019s capacity by more than 20 MW in one go, far outpacing the industry\u2019s average rate of increase of 2\u20133 MW each year.<\/p>\n Ming Yang says that the 50 MW turbine will have a \u201cstrong ability\u201d to counter typhoons but hasn\u2019t yet provided more details on how it will do so. The 16-MW model, which is supposed to serve as a prototype, has survived multiple typhoons over the past year, including more than 150-kilometer-per-hour winds from Typhoon Ragasa, says Wang Chao, chief designer for this line of models, known as OceanX. Some of its resilience is because of the fact that it is tethered to the ocean floor at a single point, so it can rotate 360 degrees \u201clike a weather vane\u201d and stay balanced during high winds, Wang says. The feature also means that the turbine can be installed in deeper waters, farther away from the shore, where wind is stronger and more consistent.<\/p>\n But the new model will be significantly bigger, so there could be \u201ca lot of risks,\u201d Mehrotra says. And there are potential technical difficulties in ensuring that the two rotors generate power smoothly because they are so close together on a single platform compared with the general spacing specifications of side-by-side turbines, he says. A representative of Ming Yang did not respond to requests for comment from Scientific American.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" November 11, 2025 3 min read The World\u2019s Largest Wind Turbine Will Smash Previous Records A planned supersized floating wind turbine with two spinning heads will generate nearly double the amount of energy as the current record-holder By You Xiaoying edited by Andrea Thompson Ming Yang\u2019s 16-MW OceanX twin turbine arrives at Yangjiang Qingzhou IV<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[64,14097,251,7014,18920,962,4742],"class_list":{"0":"post-32911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-largest","9":"tag-previous","10":"tag-records","11":"tag-smash","12":"tag-turbine","13":"tag-wind","14":"tag-worlds"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
Twin-Headed Turbines<\/h2>\n
It\u2019s Time to Stand Up for Science<\/h2>\n