Reporters learned from China Huadian that on April 9, the Huadian Yangjiang Sansha Island Offshore Wind Power Project successfully completed the installation of the first wind turbine and began full-scale construction.

The relevant person in charge of China Huaneng introduced that this is the first project in China to apply the 16.2-megawatt offshore wind turbine on a large scale, marking a solid step for China's offshore wind power development in the direction of "large capacity, large scale, and deep sea".

The HuaDian Yangjiang Sanshan Island No.6 Offshore Wind Power Project is located in the sea area south of Hailing Island, Yangjiang City, Guangdong Province. The total installed capacity is 500,000 kilowatts, the wind farm area is 54 square kilometers, the water depth is between 46 and 50 meters, the distance from the center of the site to the land is 82 kilometers, and the farthest distance from the shore is 89 kilometers. It is the farthest offshore wind power project that has been started in China so far.

The project is designed to install 31 wind turbine generators with a single unit capacity of 16.2 megawatts, which is China's first project to apply 16.2-megawatt offshore wind turbine generators on a large scale. The project will also achieve intelligent perception of the wind turbine status, intelligent judgment of faults, and intelligent coordination of operation and maintenance based on big data and intelligent algorithms, which can increase power generation by 1%-2%, reduce the comprehensive fault rate by 20%, and improve the benefits of the wind farm by 5%-10%.

Once completed, the project will be able to provide about 1.6 billion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity per year, meeting the annual electricity demand of about 700,000 households and saving more than 5 million tons of standard coal, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 1.26 million tons, and effectively contributing to the optimization of the energy structure in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

It is reported that in view of the complex working environment of the deep sea, the project will adopt a series of advanced processes and equipment, such as the first steel-concrete sandwich tower in the country, 500 kV sea cable section optimization, etc., during the construction process, to ensure the reliability of power transmission while reducing material and construction costs.

According to data from the National Energy Administration, as of the end of February this year, the installed capacity of wind power in China reached 65 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 22.8%, with the proportion of offshore wind power continuously increasing.At present, the cumulative grid-connected installed capacity of China's offshore wind power has exceeded 47 million kilowatts, which is equivalent to about two Three Gorges power stations, and has been at the top of the world for five consecutive years.

Technological innovation is constantly evolving

Helping to overcome the challenges of deep-sea wind power projects

Usually,the wind power project site with a water depth of more than 50 meters is considered as offshore wind power, and the site with a distance from the shore of more than 65 kilometers is considered as distant sea wind power.With the gradual saturation of near-shore wind power resources, China's offshore wind power is accelerating its expansion to the distant sea.

Li Weidong, deputy general manager of Huaneng Shandong Power Co., Ltd., introduced that the wind speed in the deep sea area is higher and the wind condition is more stable, and the annual equivalent full load hours are increased by 15%-20% compared with the near sea, which significantly improves the power generation benefits. However, compared with near sea projects, deep sea wind power faces more complex challenges in terms of technical research and development, equipment adaptation and cost control.

At present, the offshore wind power projects heading towards the deep sea are deeply integrating a number of hard-core technologies.

Construction in deepwater complex environment,, Huaneng Shandong Peninsula North-Offshore Wind Power Project innovatively applied the four-pile jacket foundation structure. Compared with the commonly used single pile, it builds a "steel frame base" with four legs for the wind turbine, and the four legs are connected together through the truss structure, ensuring the safety and stability of the wind turbine in the complex geological environment of the deep sea.

in terms of high-precision positioning, the project relies on the Beidou system to achieve millimeter-level construction positioning for offshore pile driving, combined with intelligent auxiliary sinking technology, which reduces the pile driving operation time for a single wind turbine in the deep sea from 48 hours to 29 hours.

In terms of submarine cable laying, the project adopted the collaborative navigation of "unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) + artificial magnetic field". The UAV was equipped with high-precision detection equipment, hovering stably and cruising in the air, and it could capture and track the actual position and forward direction of the drill bit under the seabed in real time, forming a closed-loop navigation system of "observing from the air and following underwater". As a result, the laying of a 95.6-kilometer ultra-long submarine cable was successfully completed.

Enhanced industrial advantages

The whole industry chain is accelerating and taking shape.

The Global Offshore Wind Power Industry Chain Development Report 2025 shows that the Asia-Pacific region has become the world's largest wind turbine assembly and key component production center, and China occupies a core dominant position in the global offshore wind power production capacity.

At present, China's offshore wind power industry is accelerating the construction of the entire industry chain competitive advantage, the cluster construction is accelerating, the coastal areas are speeding up the layout of the industry chain, and a number of important offshore wind power industry bases have been formed.Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Fujian and other provinces have built or are building specialized offshore wind power industrial parks, covering the entire industry chain links such as wind turbine manufacturing, supporting equipment, construction and installation, operation and maintenance services. Among them, the industrial chain layout of Shantou, Guangdong and Yancheng, Jiangsu is highly representative.

Guangdong Shantouis planning to explore diversified utilization models such as "offshore wind power + hydrogen, ammonia, and alcohol production", to seize the commanding heights of the new energy industry,and to advance towards the goal of a world-class offshore wind power high-end equipment industry cluster.Here, wind power R&D design, process flow, production delivery, and inspection and testing are all integrated, not only reducing land area by 75% but also increasing production efficiency by 3 times.

The reporter on duty visited the site and learned that the key components of the wind power main engine, such as the generator, gearbox, bearings, etc., can be seamlessly transported to the adjacent assembly workshop for assembly after production in the factory.

Shantou International Wind Power Innovation Port, equipped with the world's most advanced offshore wind power training center and the world's largest 40-megawatt class six-degree-of-freedom wind turbine test platform and other top-notch equipment, provides the strongest technical support for global wind power enterprises.

Jiangsu Yancheng has the largest offshore wind power industry cluster in China, forming an offshore wind power industry chain that integrates research and development, equipment manufacturing, resource development, operation and maintenance services, etc. The offshore wind power whole machine production capacity accounts for more than 40% of the country, and the blade production capacity accounts for about 20% of the country.

At present, China's offshore wind power industry has cultivated dozens of national-level special, refined, and new "giants" enterprises, which are deeply involved in the subdivided fields such as wind turbine bearings, seabed cables, and monitoring sensors, and have become the core support for solving subdivided technical problems.

Anchor the "15th Five-Year Plan"

Offshore wind power drives new industry growth

“The 15th Five-Year Plan clearly points out that,In the next five years, China will build offshore wind power bases in the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea, etc., and standardize the orderly advancement of deep-sea wind power development. By 2030, China's cumulative grid-connected scale of offshore wind power will reach 100 million kilowatts.

The orderly development of offshore wind power will also bring new development opportunities. During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the high-power "windmills" will drive a demand for about 170 billion yuan in wind power generation equipment, and offshore special operations will bring an increase of about 220 billion yuan in offshore engineering equipment. The new demand for high-end offshore cables will exceed 5,000 kilometers, approaching the distance from north to south in China, and will also drive the concentrated outbreak of new materials such as insulation and water-blocking.

With domestic technology breakthroughs and improved economics, Chinese wind power companies arealsostepping up their efforts to go global.One wind power company official introduced that their wind power business covers 48 countries in six continents, and they have established service centers in Asia, America, Africa, Australia, etc.

The next step is to further improve the supporting construction of the entire industrial chain, to promote the high-quality development of offshore wind power, and to help China's energy structure transform to be green and low-carbon.

The relevant person in charge of the New Energy and Renewable Energy Department of the National Energy Administration introduced that the policy supply in aspects such as deep-sea and far-sea offshore wind power will be enhanced, the management of industry development and construction will be optimized and improved, the construction of offshore wind power will be promoted in an orderly and standardized manner, and a number of deep-sea and far-sea offshore wind power projects will be promoted to start construction.

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