China’s Dongfang Electric Corporation (DEC) installed an 18 MW offshore wind turbine at a coastal test base in Shantou, Guangdong province, on 5 June.
The model has a rotor diameter of 260 metres and a swept area of 53,000 square metres , and can generate 72 GWh of electricity annually, enough to power around 36,000 households, according to the company.
The core component of the wind turbine is an 18.X MW permanent magnet semi-direct drive generator, developed in-house by DEC, which says its new generator has low vibration, low noise, and a uniform temperature rise.
The transmission of the semi-direct drive offshore wind turbine has a modular design, and the shaft system, gearbox and generator are highly integrated, which improves the reliability and transmission efficiency of the transmission chain and has good grid adaptability, the company says.
According to DEC, its 18 MW offshore wind turbine is the largest currently installed in the world.
Back in 2020, the Chinese OEM marked a similar milestone when its 10 MW wind turbine, and China’s first with this capacity, was installed at Xinghua Bay Wind Farm Phase II , off the Fujian province.
Two years later, DEC produced its first 13 MW typhoon-resistant offshore wind turbine.
China has been leading in single-unit wind turbine capacity over the past few years, with more than one OEM announcing or rolling out models of more than 15 MW, which is currently the highest output of wind turbines launched by the US and European wind turbine manufacturers.
In June last year, China Three Gorges (CTG) and Goldwind installed Goldwind’s GWH252-16MW wind turbine, with a rotor diameter of 252 metres, at a 400 MW offshore wind farm in Pingtan.
Shortly after that, Mingyang Smart Energy reported that its MySE 16-260 offshore wind turbine was commissioned and operating at full capacity in China.
At the beginning of 2023, Chinese OEM CSSC Haizhuang Wind Power, a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), rolled out the nacelle of an 18 MW offshore wind turbine prototype , the H260-18MW.
Around the same time, Mingyang unveiled its next flagship offshore wind turbine – the MySE 18.X-28X, which has a rotor diameter of over 280 metres and a swept area of 66,052 square metres.ž
In December 2023, Mingyang produced a nacelle for MySE 18.X-20MW wind turbine at its Shanwei manufacturing base in China.