Chinas first Double Ten Offshore Wind Farm Put into Operation

China Guangdong Nuclear Power Company (CGNPC) revealed that China's first "Double Ten" offshore wind farm - Rudong wind farm of CGNPC has been granted power business license, marking the start of full commercial operation of this demonstration project independently developed and constructed by CGNPC.

According to the CGNPC spokesman Huang Xiaofei, Rudong project is located in Yellow Sea Waters, Rudong County, Nantong City, Jiangsu Province. On May 8, 2015, it officially started construction with a total of 38 sets of wind turbines and a total installed capacity of 152,000 kilowatts. As China's offshore wind farm put into operation with the furthest distance from shore and the largest installed capacity, the Rudong project is about 25 km away from the coast, and 8 to 14.6m from the sea bottom, which is also China's first project that meets the “Double Ten” standard, a real offshore wind power project. “The commission of this project demonstrates that China has mastered the core technology of offshore wind power construction. Next to Germany, Britain and other countries, it becomes one of the few that have the core capability of offshore wind power construction”, said Huang.

In July 2011, the National Energy Administration and the State Oceanic Administration jointly issued Interim Implementation Measures for Offshore Wind Power Development and released the Double Ten Standards, namely, the offshore wind farm in principle should be at least 10 km away from the shore, and should be located in a beach more than 10 km wide and water depth should be no less than 10 meters. “Twelfth Five Year Development Plan" for wind power development also made it clear that wind power projects are to be constructed in waters more than 10 meters deep and 10 km away from shore.

Compared with intertidal wind power, offshore wind farms must overcome technical issues such as offshore construction, seawater and salt corrosion, long-distance cable laying and etc. Li Yilun, Vice President of CGNPC New Energy Holdings Limited, said that offshore booster station of Rudong Project was the first in Asia to combine land-based modular production with offshore assembly, not only to reduce the time of offshore operations, but also to ensure offshore booster quality. In addition, two 110kV three-core submarine cables, the longest in China, were laid with a single submarine cable with a maximum length of 28.5 km. In the process of construction, the project adopts a detachable piling platform, floating crane and other construction technology to realize the first single-pile and stable-pile platform with no transition section in deep waters, which was a successful settlement of keeping single pile verticality within three thousandths.

 Huang Xiaofei also said that as a national demonstration project, Rudong project would provide an important reference to the formulation of China's offshore wind power industry standards and on-grid tariff pricing.

Source: China Energy News (Sep.12, 2016, Edition 3)