Why Britain is a world leader in offshore wind

One turn of an “sg 8.0-167 dd” turbine generates enough electricity to run a British home for a day and a night. sg stands for Siemens Gamesa, a subsidiary of the German industrial giant, which makes the machines in Hull. The 8.0 is the turbine’s maximum output in megawatts (mw). The 167 is the diameter of its rotor in metres: it sweeps out in a circle equivalent in area to about three football pitches. And the dd stands for direct drive, an electricity-generation technology with no fiddly gears to wear out. At Hornsea 2, a wind farm located off the Yorkshire coast, 165 of these vast turbines form a field of steel stretching farther than the eye can see. Hornsea 2, which became fully functional in August, is now the largest wind farm in the world. When the wind really blows it can power 1.4m homes.