China has a national mandate of carbon neutrality by 2050. This has been driving the country to accelerate their offshore wind programs. China’s current 5-year plan clearly recognizes offshore wind as a key area for developing future, green energy. The country’s coastal provinces follow the directives, sanctioning offshore wind farms and setting up local subsidiary schemes. Giant state-owned companies take the role of developer, fast-tracking offshore wind projects. Domestic turbine makers are racing to design, build and erect ever larger turbines. To meet these demands, many offshore fab yards are taking orders and busy building foundation structures.

China eyes floating wind a key area for rapid growth in the next few years. Compared to existing offshore wind farms, the upcoming planned sites for offshore wind development are in deeper water and further offshore. Both the central and provincial governments come to realize that floating foundations are crucially important to the economic viability of upcoming wind farms. They are promoting, and subsidizing, floating wind projects for demonstration.

At the time of this article, China has two floating turbines up and running – CTG Yingling’s 5.5MW, which was connected to national grid in 2021, and CSSC Fuyao’s 6.2MW, which was commissioned in 2022. In addition, the expectation is that one 7.25 MW turbine (CNOOC GuangLan), one 4MW turbine (China Longyuan) and one 2x8.3 MW (MIngyang OceanX ) will come online in 2023, and six 16~18MW will be operational in 2024, all in South China Sea.

To many here in China, 2021 was the grand start Year- Zero for China’s floating wind. CTG (China Three Gorges Corp) succeeded in commissioning this 5.5MW floating turbine offshore Yangjiang, Guandong, and connected it to the national grid by year end 2021– effectively qualified it for the central government’s subsidized electricity price. Wison Offshore and Marine (WOM) built the semi-submersible floater and procured mooring system for this China’s first floating wind. CTG is best known for managing the largest dam in Yangtz River and its hydro turbines, and sees wind energy as the strategically important energy sector for it to grow their future business.

“Domestic turbine makers are racing to design, build and erect ever larger turbines”

As an EPC contractor for offshore industry, WOM views renewable energy is the foundation for the sustainable future. Since delivering Three Gorges’ floater, WOM forms a task force to accelerate the development of her own floating wind technologies. WOM has two priority concepts for floating wind, w.BTTM and w.semiTM, which adopt the concepts of buoyant tower and semi-submersible, respectively. WOM owns patents to Buoyant Tower. w.semiTM has been awarded Approval in Principle (AIP) by the leading certification companies of DnV and ABS. This concept is engineered to target large turbines (10MW+) in a very harsh environment. Currently, WOM is testing a scaled w.semiTM model in a world-class water basin to investigate the motion performance for deployment in South China Sea.

The R&D team of WOM has been collaborating with many turbine makers to refine designs of both turbines and floaters. Moving a land-based turbine to offshore requires re-engineering of the turbines and blades. And the close working relationship with turbine makers also helps WOM in fine-tuning the engineering approach and designs, which ultimately will lead to cost savings of floaters and moorings.

WOM has built up a strong project team that is trained and tested to work seamlessly with vendors of mooring, T&I and dynamic cables, in addition to developers. The WOM wind team is taking on initiatives of coupled analysis and modular floaters to continuously drive down costs of offshore wind projects. Their ultimate goal is to realize the full potentials of “Made in/from China” concepts, which are WOM’s cost-competitive floating winds for the whole world.