China's deepest offshore wind farm goes online in Yellow Sea

BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- China on Tuesday put its deepest offshore wind farm into full-capacity operation, marking breakthroughs in deep-water construction, large-scale turbine integration and precision installation technologies, according to state-owned China Huaneng Group.

The project is located roughly 70 kilometers off the northern coast of east China's Shandong Peninsula in the northern Yellow Sea. Situated in waters between 52 and 56 meters deep, it is China's deepest commercial offshore wind project.

It has a total installed capacity of 504 megawatts, featuring 42 sets of 12-megawatt wind turbines. At full capacity, the wind farm will generate approximately 1.7 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, which is enough to save about 500,000 tonnes of standard coal per year.

The project overcame challenges including complex deep-sea geology, frequent extreme sea conditions and long-distance offshore construction. Innovations include the application of four-pile jacket foundation structures up to 83.9 meters tall, the tallest of their kind in China, to ensure safe and stable operation of the turbines in the complex deep-sea geological environment.

This project also adopted high-precision positioning technology developed on the basis of China's homegrown BeiDou Satellite Navigation System, achieving millimeter-level accuracy in seabed pile driving. Combined with intelligent auxiliary sinking technology, the pile-sinking operation time for a single turbine was shortened from 48 hours to 29 hours.

In addition, collaborative technology combining drones and artificial magnetic fields enabled workers to complete the laying of 95.6 kilometers of ultra-long submarine cables.

With vast onshore wind farms across its northern and western regions and rapidly expanding offshore projects along the eastern coastline, China's wind energy not only provides clean electricity to millions of households but also plays a crucial role in reducing carbon emissions.

China's newly installed and cumulative offshore wind power capacity both accounted for more than half of the global total, according to data released by the Ministry of Natural Resources in March this year.