GE Renewable Energy

The history of the General Electric company dates back to 1876, when the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison moved to Menlo Park, New Jersey and pioneered electricity. Over the decades, General Electric has successfully turned its attention to numerous business areas and is now a versatile conglomerate that also deals with renewable energies in the GE Renewable Energy division. For example, GE accounts for a significant part of the global energy portfolio in the wind power sector. Thanks to their robust design of variable speed control, sophisticated electronics and individual rotor blade angle control, GE wind turbines deliver reliably and long-term high yields with the best possible use of existing wind potential. General Electric has been present in Europe since 2002 with GE Renewable Energy Europe. Worldwide, the renewable energies business unit has installed more than 21,000 wind turbines with a total capacity of over 34,000 megawatts. In addition, GE customers are supported with a comprehensive service program and are supported from project development to plant operation and maintenance to commercial use and grid integration.

Overview of all GE wind turbines

Among the wind turbines manufactured by General Electric, the E-1.5s and 1.5se turbine types with a nominal output of 1500 kW and a rotor diameter of 70.5 meters are among the most successful. From this performance class, the models 1.5sl, 1.5sle, 1.5xle and 1.5-77 were also installed very frequently. The turbines 1.6sle with 77 meters, 1.6xle and 1.6-82.5 with 82.5 meters each, and the 1.6-100 and 1.7-100 with 100 meters each have slightly larger rotor diameters. GE developed somewhat more powerful models with the 1.85-82.5 and the 1.85-87, before the 2000 kW threshold was exceeded with the 2.3 model, which has a rotor diameter of 94. Later, the 2.5xl model followed, which was installed over a thousand times. Other turbines from the 2 MW class are the models 2.5-100, 2.5-120,

2.75-100, 2.75-103, 2.85-100 and 2.85-103. In contrast to the other 2.5 MW turbines, which have a permanent magnet generator, the former is equipped with a double-fed asynchronous generator and is specially designed for low-wind locations. Turbines in the 3 MW class are, for example, the 3.0s, 3.0sl and GE 3000. The 3.6sl, 4.0-110 and 4.1-113 models, on the other hand, can be used offshore.