A 504 MW offshore wind farm developed by China Huaneng Group (CHNG) was fully commissioned on 7 April.
The Shandong Peninsula North wind farm has been built at a site located some 70 kilometres off the coast of Shandong Province, where water depth ranges between 52 and 56 metres, making this China’s deepest commercial offshore wind project to date.
The offshore wind farm features 42 turbines rated at 12 MW each, installed on four-legged jacket foundations, which reach a maximum height of 83.9 metres, the tallest of its kind in China.
CHNG said on 8 April that the project also developed high-precision positioning technology, based on the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, achieving millimetre-level positioning for seabed pile driving which, combined with intelligent assisted sinking technology, reduced the pile driving time for a single wind turbine foundation from 48 hours to 29 hours.
The developer also said that for the offshore cable installation for the 504 MW offshore wind project, it used a combined technology of drones and artificial magnetic fields, which helped lay 95.6 kilometres of subsea cable.
Shandong Province got the first offshore wind turbine installed off its coast back in 2021, when the work started on the 301.6 MW Huaneng Shandong Peninsula South 4 wind farm, offshore Haiyang City.
According to information shared at that time, the Chinese province aims to develop 12.6 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030.