America's first "commercial scale" offshore wind energy project has decided to use GE's colossal Haliade-X turbines, the world's largest and most powerful. Standing 853 ft (260 m) high – as tall as an 85-story building – with a 722-foot (220 m) rotor, each one can power a home for two days with one spin.

The Vineyard Wind 1 project, an 800 MW renewable energy project, will place a number of these monster turbines some 15 miles off the South coast of Martha's Vineyard, an island off Massachusetts, to take advantage of the strong winds off the East coast of the United states. It'll power about 400,000 houses in New England, expecting to become active sometime in 2023.

Each Haliade-X turbine is a self-contained 12-13 megawatt generator in its own right, capable of generating 67 gigawatt-hours annually under perfect conditions. Making them so huge is key; not only do those 351-foot (107 m) long blades capture some 45 percent more energy than anything else on the market, it's also more effective at lower wind speeds, making its output more predictable. Also, using fewer, larger turbines cuts down significantly on installation costs.

Vineyard Wind 1 might be the largest offshore wind project in America, but its 800 MW capacity lags far behind the world's largest offshore wind project – the 3.6 gigawatt Dogger Bank project in the UK, which will use the same GE turbines. How does that compare to onshore? Well, the world's largest wind project overall is China's Gansu wind farm, with a planned capacity of some 20 gigawatts – although according to The New York Times, political factors have rendered it "mostly idle."

Check out a short video about the Haliade-X turbine below.

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