Vestas unveils massive 7-megawatt offshore wind turbine (video)

Building and putting any sort of offshore wind turbine into place is a fairly impressive bit of engineering, but Denmark’s Vestas is truly going the extra mile with its new V164-7.0 MW turbine. Not only does it promise to provide seven megawatts of power but, as you can see above, each of the blades is longer than nine double-decker buses, which gives the turbine itself a larger total diameter than the London Eye. Of course, the company also hopes that there will eventually be not just a few of these but massive farms of the turbines at sea (the North Sea, specifically), although that won’t exactly happen overnight — Vestas only expects to have the first prototypes ready by the end of 2012, with full production expected to begin in the first quarter of 2015. Head on past the break for a video — don’t worry, nothing like this happens.

[Thanks, Alex]