Offshore Wind Power Heads for Deep Blue—— CSSC Haizhuang Wind Power Leads Development of China’s First Deep-Sea Floating Wind Power Equipment

Wang Jin, Kuang Zhanting

The “dual-carbon” goal has opened a new era of low carbon, and offshore wind power has become the main force of wind power growth, and it is inevitable to compete in the sea for“wind”. In order to fully explore the ample wind energy resources of deep and high seas, CSSC Haizhuang Wind Power Co., Ltd. (HZ Wind) led the completion of design and manufacturing of China’s first deep-sea floating wind power equipment “Fuyao”.The “Fuyao” floating wind power equipment towing ceremony was held in Maoming city, Guangdong Province on May 27. The smooth launch of the“Fuyao” will help China's offshore wind power move to deep and high seas and achieve the goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality.

Offshore wind power speeding into deep sea

The reserves of offshore wind resources are extremely abundant.It is preliminarily estimated that the offshore wind resources are three times onshore ones, and most of the offshore wind resources are located in deep and high seas. According to public data, the world's deep-sea wind power reserves exceed 8,200 gigawatts, more than twice the offshore reserves, and will not conflict with offshore fisheries and shipping routes. enjoying huge exploitable potential. Moreover, with the development and planning of offshore resources in some countries and regions approaching saturation, the development of global offshore wind power resources has accelerated from offshore to deep and high seas.

After more than a decade of offshore wind power development, China overtook the UK to become the world's largest offshore wind power market for the first time in 2021, with a total installed capacity of 10.48 gigawatts.As a major maritime country, China has a great potential for the development and utilization of deep-sea wind power resources. Public data show that China's deep-sea wind energy reserves reach 1,268 gigawatts. Under the goals of“dual carbon”, the development of offshore wind power has become an important strategic support for China's energy structure transformation.Developing offshore wind power is essential and exploring deep-sea wind power technology is imperative if we are to achieve the proportion target of renewable energy in China, achieve carbon peaking and carbon neutrality,and ensure China's energy security.

At present, the development of offshore wind power in China is moving in the development path of “intertidal wind farm -- offshore wind farm --deep-sea wind farm”. In the process of moving into the deep sea, the technical and economic challenges of the traditional fixed foundation offshore wind power equipment have increased sharply: the greater the water depth, the more the materials used for the fixed offshore wind turbine foundation, and the greater the construction difficulty. It is generally believed that when the water depth is more than 60 m, the floating type is more suitable than the fixed wind turbines. Therefore, floating offshore wind turbines, with the advantages of high wind resource utilization rate and flexible sites, break the limitation of traditional fixed offshore wind power construction by space sites, and are more and more favored by the industry.

Demonstration projects create a fresh path

It is against this background that the “Fuyao” was born. As China’s first offshore floating wind power equipment demonstration prototype designed, implemented and tested according to offshore floating wind power deep-sea conditions,the “Fuyao” has many advanced features such as strong environmental adaptability, the largest unit power in China, simple floating body structure form, high reliability of mooring anchorage system and integrated design.

The “Fuyao” is applicable for a water depth of no less than 50 m and a sea flow of no less than 3.5 m/s,and can withstand once-in-a-century sea conditions. By modifying the local structure of the mooring system and floating platform, the “Fuyao” can be applied to all kinds of sea areas. The“Fuyao” is equipped with 6.2 MW typhoon-resistant type-I wind turbine generator (WTG), the largest floating WTG, applying the technical route featuring three vanes, upwind direction,variable pitch and speed, three-stage gear box acceleration, permanent magnet generator + full power frequency converter, characterized by high power generation, high reliability,high-level safety, high integration and high maintenability.

The “Fuyao” is China's first floating wind power equipment used in deep-sea waters (water depth of more than 50 m), its development has set several domestic records, such as China’s largest power level, the deepest applicable depth, the lightest floating body weight per megawatt.The development of the “Fuyao”mainly faced challenges caused by the huge difference between floating wind power equipment and traditional fixed wind power equipment. Relying on deep accumulation of CSSC many member units in the ocean engineering sector, combined with their years of experience in the field of wind power,HZ Wind fully exchanged design data and calculation analysis results, unified the term system, looking for the bonding point of calculation method, changing ideas, getting closer, finally successfully developing the domestic first floating wind power equipment applicable for more than 50 m seawater depth.

In the course of research and development, the team has made a lot of innovative achievements in floating body design, motion state monitoring and other technologies. Especially during the design of the “Fuyao”,the idea of integrated design fit in for the first time, and through the iteration of unit-floating body design systematic circulation, the path of reducing the cost of floating wind power was explored.Floating wind power is very sensitive to the operating environment, the domestic marine environment is very complicated and plentiful, and the wind-waveflow environment in different waters differs in a thousand ways. In the future,large-scale development will inevitably need to develop the corresponding floating structure according to the characteristics of each sea area, and no structure tries to do everything all by oneself. Therefore, integrated design is an indispensable path to deal with such scenarios that require a lot of customized design.

The development of the “Fuyao”explores the feasibility of the future industrialization of floating wind power in China, which is of great significance.Its demonstration application will explore a new path for the development of deep-sea wind power in China, fill the gap in the integrated design and application verification of high-power offshore floating wind power equipment in China, and provide necessary technical support for the large-scale development of deep-sea wind power in China, and help the realization of the“dual carbon” goals.

Build China's offshore wind power tech highland

In fact, HZ Wind was the first in set-up for the layout and deep cultivation of offshore wind power. The“Fuyao” took the lead many years ago. In 2009, HZ Wind contracted the National Offshore Wind Power Engineering Technology Research Center. As a pioneer of domestic offshore wind power, the “national team” of the wind power equipment industry and one of the pillar industries of the science and technology application sector mainly cultivated by CSSC, HZ Wind has the strength and confidence to lead China's offshore wind power to the deep and high seas.

Over the 2008-2021 period,13 years of experience in the R&D,design and operation of large-megawatt offshore wind turbines established HZ Wind as the only complete appliance manufacturer that continuously and steadily promotes the development,demonstration and application of largescale offshore WTGs in China. From unit development to demonstration operation, from certification test to lead development of the national standards,in the field of offshore wind, HZ Wind has always taken independence and steerability as the core, created national and global records one by one, broke the foreign technology monopoly, set the course for the development direction of the domestic offshore wind industry, led to the development of the large offshore wind industry chain, and effectively promoted the implementation of the national offshore wind development strategy..

The development of the “Fuyao”won’t go without CSSC layout in the whole wind power equipment industry chain and the technical accumulation in the offshore engineering sector.As the world's largest shipbuilding group and China’s only professional group with a relatively complete wind power equipment development and production system, CSSC has achieved fruitful results in deep-sea farming,coastal and marine tourism, cruise and yacht industry, “wind power +” and other aspects. Hinging on the overall advantages of the group, after years of development, HZ Wind has a whole industry chain system integrating offshore wind power engineering survey and design, equipment manufacturing,engineering construction and operation guarantee.

In 2018, HZ Wind “Offshore Floating Wind Power Equipment Development” project won national major scientific research project support. As the project lead unit,HZ Wind actively collaborated with domestic ship design and research center, China ship scientific research center and other units, as well as Shanghai Jiaotong University, Harbin Engineering University, Chongqing University and other universities and scientific research institutions, focused on research and jointly completed design, manufacturing, installation, test and certification of floating projects,and met the unit demonstration requirements. Furthermore, more than 90% of the main components of the equipment can be matched in CSSC,with unique strategic advantages.

With the establishment of the dual carbon” goals, CSSC has uplifted the development and application of wind power and other clean energy to a new height, defined that the “wind power +”industry is one of the main businesses,formulated the “wind power +”clean energy industry special planning for the 14th Five-Year Plan period,will unswervingly play group sci-tech advantages in shipbuilding and offshore engineering, go all out to build better and stronger “wind power +”clean energy and other high-end equipment industries, and build the offshore wind power industry into a domestic leading,international first-class whole industry chain by 2025.

The successful “Fu Yao”project is the first floating wind power demonstration project directly led by a wind power complete unit manufacturer in China and the world.Through the implementation of the“Fuyao” demonstration project, HZ Wind achieved zero breakthrough in the floating wind power equipment technology and engineering, possesses the whole process forward development capability from the environmental resources data, integrated overall design, detailed design, integrated simulation analysis, pool shrinkage test verification, manufacturing and engineering implementation, and established a professional team in the floating wind power sector.