雅思阅读 183: Supersized Floating Wind Turbines（超大型海上浮式风机）

改编自 Scientific American（2025年11月）。雅思阅读 Section 3 难度，约 1050 词。 素材来源：https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-worlds-largest-wind-turbine-will-smash-previous-records/

Reading Passage

A. For more than a decade, engineers in the offshore wind industry have competed to build ever-larger turbines, and the contest shows no sign of slowing. The current record holder, a machine installed off the Chinese coast by Dongfang Electric, stands so tall that its tower approaches the height of a 63-storey skyscraper and its blades stretch more than twice the wingspan of a Boeing 777. Rated at 26 megawatts, it produces more than double the output of an average individual turbine, enough to supply several thousand European households with electricity over a year. Yet even this colossus is destined to be overtaken. Ming Yang Smart Energy, a manufacturer based in southern China, has announced a floating machine with a capacity of 50 megawatts — nearly twice the current record — and plans to begin production later this year before deploying it at sea next year. Floating, in this context, means the turbine does not stand on a tower driven into the seabed; it rides on a buoyant platform moored to the ocean floor, a design that opens deep-water sites where fixed foundations are impractical. The announcement is the latest symptom of an industry-wide arms race in which scale has become the dominant strategy for cutting costs.

B. The push towards gigantism is driven less by engineering pride than by economics. When the Chinese government withdrew subsidies for offshore wind farms in 2022, developers were forced to find savings wherever they could. Zhu Ronghua, who directs the Yangjiang Offshore Wind Energy Laboratory, explains that transport, construction and installation together account for 70 to 80 per cent of the expense of building an offshore wind farm. Erecting fewer, more powerful machines therefore cuts these fixed costs sharply: one 50-megawatt unit replaces two 25-megawatt units, halving the number of foundations, cables, vessels and installation visits required. The economics are especially compelling at sea, where every crane day, every tugboat hour and every dive is enormously expensive compared with work on land. Western manufacturers such as Siemens Gamesa have also pursued larger designs, but the trend has been most aggressive in China, where the withdrawal of public support turned cost reduction into an urgent necessity rather than a gradual optimisation. The result is an industry in which the rated capacity of flagship turbines climbs year after year, and where a decade-old machine rated at 5 megawatts already looks quaint.

C. Ming Yang's proposed machine is unusual not only in its size but in its architecture. Most large turbines carry a single rotor atop a single tower. The new design, by contrast, mounts two complete rotors — each capable of generating 25 megawatts — on a Y-shaped tower fixed to one floating platform. Each blade measures 145 metres, roughly three times the height of the Statue of Liberty, and the distance between the two rotor centres is 585 metres. The concept is a scaled-up version of a 16-megawatt twin-headed prototype already operating in the South China Sea under the OceanX programme. Han Yujia, a researcher at Global Energy Monitor, notes that the planned jump of more than 20 megawatts in a single generation dwarfs the industry's usual annual increase of just 2 to 3 megawatts. The logic is that two rotors on one platform share the cost of the floating foundation, the mooring system and the export cable that carries the electricity to shore — expenses that, until now, had to be paid twice. If the design proves viable at this scale, analysts at Rystad Energy describe it as a potential "game changer" for the floating wind sector, because it could bring the cost of deep-water wind close to that of near-shore fixed farms.

D. A floating turbine must survive conditions that fixed-bottom machines never encounter. Ming Yang claims the 50-megawatt design will have a "strong ability" to withstand typhoons, though it has not yet published detailed engineering specifications. The smaller 16-megawatt prototype has, however, already demonstrated resilience: it endured multiple typhoons during its first year at sea, including winds above 150 kilometres per hour from Typhoon Ragasa. Its chief designer, Wang Chao, attributes part of this durability to a mooring system that tethers the platform to the seabed at a single point. Freed to rotate around that point, the whole structure turns "like a weather vane" to face the wind, balancing loads that would otherwise tear a rigid tower apart. The design also means the platform can yaw gently with the waves rather than fighting them, reducing fatigue on the blades and the drivetrain. The same single-point tether also allows the platform to operate in deeper water, further from shore, where winds are stronger and more consistent than near the coast — a crucial advantage, because most of the world's best wind resource lies far out to sea, beyond the reach of fixed-bottom foundations.

E. Despite the promise, significant uncertainties remain. Umang Mehrotra, an offshore wind analyst at Rystad Energy, warns that scaling the twin-rotor concept to 50 megawatts introduces "a lot of risks" that the smaller prototype did not face. In particular, placing two rotors so close together on one platform violates the conventional spacing rules used for side-by-side turbines, and engineers must ensure that the wake from one rotor does not disrupt the aerodynamics of the other. The larger structure will also place unprecedented demands on floating foundations, mooring cables and the vessels needed to install and service it. There are questions too about whether a machine this size can be built and launched in a single port, and whether the specialised installation vessels required exist or must themselves be commissioned. Whether the twin-headed approach ultimately becomes an industry standard, or remains an experimental curiosity, depends on whether the cost savings from shared platforms outweigh the technical challenges of coordinating two rotors in stormy seas. What is already clear is that the era of the modest offshore turbine is over, and that the next decade of the industry will be written in ever-larger machines riding ever-deeper water.

Questions 1-4

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B, C, D and E from the list of headings below.

List of Headings i. Why the industry is building bigger machines ii. The history of wind power subsidies worldwide iii. A novel twin-rotor architecture at unprecedented scale iv. How floating platforms survive extreme weather v. Remaining technical risks and open questions vi. The cost of a Boeing 777 aircraft vii. Why onshore wind is more popular than offshore

1. Paragraph B: ____
2. Paragraph C: ____
3. Paragraph D: ____
4. Paragraph E: ____

Questions 5-8

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

5. According to the passage, why did Chinese developers pursue larger turbines after 2022? A. The government banned smaller turbines entirely. B. Subsidies were withdrawn, forcing them to reduce costs. C. They wanted to export turbines to Western markets. D. Larger turbines require more installation vessels.

6. What is distinctive about Ming Yang's proposed 50-megawatt design? A. It has a single rotor on a concrete tower. B. It mounts two rotors on one Y-shaped floating platform. C. It is fixed to the seabed in shallow water. D. It uses blades shorter than those of the current record holder.

7. How does the 16-megawatt prototype survive typhoons? A. It is anchored rigidly to four points on the seabed. B. It automatically retracts its blades during storms. C. It is tethered at one point and rotates to face the wind. D. It is towed back to harbour when storms approach.

8. What concern does the analyst Mehrotra raise about the twin-rotor design? A. The blades are too short to capture enough wind. B. The two rotors may interfere with each other's airflow. C. The platform cannot be built with existing materials. D. The design produces more noise than conventional turbines.

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer?

Write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. The current record-holding turbine has a capacity of 26 megawatts.
10. Transport, construction and installation account for less than half the cost of an offshore wind farm.
11. Each blade on the proposed 50-megawatt turbine is 145 metres long.
12. The 16-megawatt prototype has never experienced a typhoon.
13. The 50-megawatt turbine will be installed in the North Sea off the coast of Europe.

Questions 14-15

Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

The smaller prototype survives storms because it is tethered to the seabed at a single point, allowing it to rotate like a (14) __________ and operate in (15) __________ water far from shore.

答案与解析

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