GE Renewable Energy announced Sierra, its newest onshore wind turbine platform designed specifically for the North America region. The 3.0-3.4 MW turbine features a 140-meter rotor and is offered with a variety of hub heights, including a <500’ option. Sierra also includes GE’s revolutionary two-piece blade, designed to improve logistics, installation and serviceability. The business has currently received more than 1 GW of orders for the turbine platform. GE has manufactured, installed and commissioned its first site of Sierra turbines, which exceeded 98% availability faster than GE’s previous onshore platform launches to date, and is operating with 4 points higher capacity factor, compared to GE’s 2 MW platform.

Sierra is built on the legacy of GE’s bestselling 2 MW platform, which recently surpassed 30 GW of installed base globally. The Sierra platform launched with two prototypes, one in Lubbock, TX and one in Kamataka, India, with more than a year of successful run time on each.

Sierra turbines will be manufactured at GE’s Pensacola, FL manufacturing facility, with a significant portion of its components manufactured in North America. The 68.7m two-piece blades are manufactured by both LM Wind Power and TPI, enabling improved transportation logistics, installation and serviceability/upgrades.

GE’s Sierra platform includes a variety of key enhancements, including:

High capacity factor turbines with reduced pads per site (+4 pts capacity factor with 15% less pads needed per 100 MW compared to 2 MW)

GE’s revolutionary two-piece blade for reduced logistics, improved site installation and improved serviceability

Simplified machine head & electrical system, built off GE’s 2 MW platform, including single main bearing, single piece down tower assembly (DTA), external pad mount transformer (PMT) and rail-shippable machine head – supporting ease of installation & serviceability

Optimized 3 & 4 section towers for ease of transport & installation, including 500’ tip height 81m tower option for FAA limited sites

Crane flexibility, optimized for readily-available 600-ton crane class to reduce cost & eliminate crane supply constraints; single blade & full rotor installation compatible

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Strategic Research Institute

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