CNOOC Ltd has announced that the Wenchang deep-sea floating wind demonstration project has been successfully connected to the grid and is generating power.
The demonstration project is located near the Wenchang oilfields in the western part of the South China Sea, 136 km from shore in a water depth of 120 m. It is believed to be the world's first semi-submersible ‘double hundred’ deep-sea floating wind project, being located at a water depth of over 100 m and separated offshore by a distance of over 100 km. A semi-submersible foundation is partly submerged to provide station-keeping and stability. Such a structure avoids large wave loading. It typically consists of a submerged hull, with mooring provided by weighted foundations for hard seabed conditions and ‘suction anchor’ foundations for softer soil.
The project's main production facility, Haiyou Guanlan, is China's first deep-sea floating wind power platform supplying power to an offshore oilfield under such challenging oceanic conditions. With an installed capacity of 7.25 MW, the platform can produce up to 22 m kWh of electricity per year, equivalent to saving nearly 10 m cubic m of natural gas and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 22 000 tons.
Image courtesy of CNOOC
