Interesting developments for the offshore wind market are on the horizon with Vestas today having completed its extensive testing of what will be the world’s most powerful wind turbine – the Vestas V164 – 8 MW with the nacelle weighing in at a massive 390 tons and being 20 metres long. Whilst the prototype is to be installed and tested to ensure reliability and performance in the early part of 2014, a turbine with this capacity is what the offshore wind market has been waiting for, making future offshore wind projects much more commercially viable compared to the current offshore wind farms. With current wind turbines in a majority of operating offshore wind projects currently each having a maximum capacity between 3 MW and 3.6 MW, an 8 MW wind turbine will dramatically change the economics of an offshore wind project given the cost of installation and cost of operation and maintenance of the turbines offshore as well as the savings for infrastructure.