Culture
The Future of Wind Turbines Is Enormous
Wind experts see an era of super-sized turbines approaching, with larger blades and capacities, but lower costs.
Imagine a wind turbine so humongous it’d tower over the Washington Monument, jutting into the skyline and making itself visible many miles away. This vision of the future might not be far from reality, as turbines continue to get larger and more energetically ferocious.
With wind energy established across much of the world, some have wondered if turbine technology has hit a limit in terms of size and generation versus cost. Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and elsewhere interviewed 163 international wind experts, and in Nature Energy state the conclusion that no, they’re bound to get bigger yet.