The World’s Largest Wind Turbines Have Started Generating Power in England

The engineers responsible for maintaining the hardware at the Burbo Bank wind farm, off the northwest coast of England, will need a head for heights. Standing 195 meters tall, these are the tallest wind turbines in commercial use on the planet.

The new wind farm, actually an addition to an older facility installed a decade ago, comprises 32 of the gargantuan new turbines. Each one is fitted with three 80-meter-long blades, allowing it to crank out eight megawatts of power—for a grand total of 258 megawatts from the entire installation, which went live this week. According to the Danish firm DONG Energy, which led the project, a single revolution of the blades on one turbine can power a home for 29 hours.

The U.K. is no stranger to offshore wind power. As the Guardian notes, the nation has installed more of it than any other country in the world, and it now boasts 5.3 gigawatts of such capacity. In contrast, the U.S. only recently got its first offshore wind farm. But Donald Trump has U-turned on his dislike for the technology—so maybe a take on Burbo Bank is somewhere in America's future.

(Read more: Guardian, “Finally, the U.S. Is About to Get Its First Offshore Wind Power,” “Trump Once Railed Against Offshore Wind but Is Now Embracing It”)