China Launches World's Largest Offshore Turbine

CSSC Haizhuang, one of China's ten largest defense conglomerates, announced that it has developed a rotor hub and nacelle of a prototype of a massive 18 MW offshore wind turbine. According to a press release issued by the subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) on Friday, the prototype of the world's largest offshore wind turbine was unveiled at an event held at Dongying City industrial park in China's Shandong province.

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The turbine has market prospects in high-speed wind and deep-sea areas.

In a statement from the company,

The turbine has market prospects in high-speed wind and deep-sea areas. The H260-18MW turbine unit will feature modularized medium-speed gear drivetrains and a 260-meter diameter rotor to power a permanent magnet generator. This new turbine is larger than other Chinese companies such as China Three Gorges, Goldwind and MingYang. It is also more powerful than existing models from Siemens Gamesa, Vestas and General Electric.

CSSC Haizhuang, based in Chongqing in southwest China, said its design is a "candidate for the [offshore wind] turbine crown" and is the latest evolution of its previous 16 MW turbine. The new turbine "H260-18.0″ features 128-meter SuperBlade+ blades with load-reducing pitch control, the company said. These blades have a sweep area of 53,000 m2, equivalent to the area of seven football fields. CSSC Haizhuang designed the turbine with a powertrain with the requirements of "balanced load, flexible generator system matching and common blade pattern".

The turbine also features a "holographic sensing system" for overall load reduction and control technology for variable pitch and torque. It is supported by multi-source online monitoring to reduce blade vibration, or the amount of aeroelastic instability caused by the combination of vibration and pressure distributions on the blades, by 10 percent. The design is also expected to minimize vibrations in the turbine tower and foundations by up to 50 percent, according to CSSC Haizhuang.

Capacity: 74,000 MWh of Electricity per year

The new model was developed with independent IP [intellectual property] rights, which improved the turbine nationalization rate, and uses 80 percent of the design components, including the blade, gearbox, the company said in a statement. When operating at maximum capacity, the H260-18MW will be able to generate 44.8 kilowatt hours of electricity at each revolution. A single wind turbine will be able to generate enough energy to power 40,000 homes for a year.

"The adaptive power boost control technology increases the power generation capacity by 3% for each turbine," CSSC Haizhuang said. The group claims that each turbine can generate 74,000 MWh of electricity per year. In 2022, China's offshore wind market entered a new era of grid parity. In this context, the wind industry is focusing on how to reduce LCOE (Levelized cost of energy) and improve power generation. CSSC Haizhuang believes that large-scale and high reliability wind turbines are essential to scale up wind power and reduce cost.