SCHIPKAU, Germany (AP) — A wind turbine described by its developer as the world’s tallest now rises 365 meters (1,197 feet) above the sparsely populated landscape of eastern Germany, surpassing the height of the Eiffel Tower.
The colossal turbine has been built at an existing wind farm in Lusatia, southeast of Berlin. Once a major center of lignite mining, the region has increasingly turned to renewable energy in recent years. The prototype reached its full height this week and is due to be inaugurated in mid-November.
Jochen Grossmann, chief executive of Gicon, the Dresden-based engineering company that built the tower, said the structure would harness the stronger, more reliable winds found at greater heights. Conventional wind turbines typically have a hub height — the distance from the ground to the center of the rotor — of well below 200 meters (656 feet).
“At 300 meters, we have such constant and strong wind that we can produce more than twice as much electrical energy as with the same facility at today’s heights,” Grossmann said on Thursday. He added that it would also be possible to produce electricity for much more of the year than with existing turbines.
The turbine has a hub height of 300 meters (984 feet), and its rotor blades bring its total height to 365 meters. That makes it taller than the Eiffel Tower in Paris, at 330 meters (1,083 feet), and leaves it just short of Berlin’s television tower, Germany ‘s tallest building at 368 meters (1,207 feet).
Work on the turbine is not yet complete, with internal wiring still to be installed ahead of its planned inauguration on Nov. 19. The prototype is intended to measure the potential gains from building turbines at such heights.
Gicon plans to use the findings to develop a wind farm containing three to five extra-tall turbines, paving the way for possible full-scale production.
Grossmann also sees the giant turbines as a potential solution to the shortage of suitable land for wind farms. Existing sites could be expanded into “two-story” wind farms combining shorter and taller turbines, while new sites could be designed that way from the outset.
Germany has been working for years to expand the use of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources. It switched off its last nuclear power plants in 2023 in a long-planned move, though that drew criticism after energy prices surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Germany also plans to stop generating electricity from coal by 2038.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, 59.1% of energy produced in Germany in the first half of 2026 came from renewable sources. Wind was the largest single source, providing 29.4% of the total.
Banner image: A newly constructed wind turbine, whose rotor tips reach a maximum height of 365 meters (1,198 feet), stands in Schipkau, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. Image courtesy of Markus Schreiber, Associated Press
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Previously Published on news.mongabay with Creative Commons Attribution
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