Visualising 15MW Wind Turbines

Side Project - 11.04.2021

No sound. Video is circa 15Mb so may take a moment to load.

Wind turbines have gotten big, really big. If you've ever walked near one you probably already thought so. But the turbines we see onshore are made to look tiny by the newest batch of offshore wind turbines. In an attempt to convey just how large they are, I made the above video inserting the IEA-15-240-RWT into recognisable locations.

Comparing wind turbines against famous landmarks is nothing new, but I've always found these illustrations a bit lacking. Typically, these visualisations are images, rather than videos, and whichever landmark is being compared against is taken into isolation, rather than in place. I think my video makes things a bit easier to comprehend.

The turbine used is the IEA/NREL/DTU's IEA-15-240-RWT. This is a fictional turbine which has been drawn up to aid industry/research. More about this project can be read here. The basic dimensions are shown in the image below. Although this turbine does not exist, it is only marginally larger than what currently does exist. At the time of writing, the world's largest turbine is the Vestas V236-15MW which has a rotor diameter of 236m (774ft), only 4m smaller than the reference machine. Link to a Vestas brochure.

Image from NREL's website, https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2020/reference-turbine-gives-offshore-wind-updraft.html

Video Details

CAD for the turbine was provided by IEAWindTask37 Github, here and NOT made by me. The model was brought into Trimble (formerly "Google SketchUp") and geolocated into Google Earth Pro. Google Earth Pro was then used to make a video tour.

After the videos for each location were created they were edited together using Lightworks. A lot of free trials were used to make this happen, especially getting the CAD converted into a format accepted by Trimble.

If you like the above and want to support me creating projects like this, please consider buying a poor student a coffee ☕. Click here or search "rorymorrison" on Monzo.me.