The turbine manufacturer made the announcement at the Canadian Wind Energy Association's 30th annual conference, underway in Montreal.
The landmark turbine, a GE 1.6-100 model, is part of China Longyuan Canada's 99 MW Dufferin wind farm in Ontario, the company's first project in North America.
Anne McEntee, CEO of GE's renewable energy business, told CanWEA delegates that while the long-term market fundamentals look sound, there are some short-term challenges that need to be dealt with through stable policy commitments, ideally at the federal level.
"We also need speed, because the technology development cycles are really starting to shorten, so the longer you drag out some of the policy changes or the processes, the bigger opportunity there is to hurt the overall growth of the industry."
GE's Canadian projects include the 199MW Melanchton and 127MW Jardin d'Éole projects in Ontario and Quebec respectively. Both projects use GE's 1.5MW turbine, the precursor to the current 1.6MW and 1.7MW machines.
