Wind

'Shallow water' floating wind could speed China's offshore build: Ming Yang

Head of Chinese turbine OEM's European operations tells Recharge roundtable that pilot in South China Sea could spark rethink of technology as 'only' for deep-water

Ming Yang's 7MW offshore turbine design has been scaled-up to 11MW and the OEM has a 15MW in the works
Ming Yang's 7MW offshore turbine design has been scaled-up to 11MW and the OEM has a 15MW in the worksFoto: MYSE

China’s plans to rapidly expand its offshore wind fleet in the next decade could be sped up “considerably” by installing floating units in sea-depths until now developed using fixed foundations, with a pilot being built off the Asian nation expected to prove the ‘deep-water’ technology economic in as little as 30 metres of water, according to the head of project OEM Ming Yang’s European division.

Wei Chen, speaking at a Recharge digital roundtable, said the turbine maker, which is delivering a 5.5MW machine for the demonstrator in the South China Sea – expected to be in the water “in the second half of this year” – believes the project could “change the way” China shapes the build-out of its offshore wind resource.

“This project is a milestone for China as the first floating wind development – until now the market has been focused only on bottom-fixed [foundations] because we have mainly shallow water conditions [in Chinese waters] which is the main reason that floating has not yet been commercialised,” he said.

“But we now have some other [project site] conditions to consider [in expanding China’s offshore wind fleet] – stones and rocky seabeds which are difficult for monopiles [to be installed in] and so on. This has motivated us to further explore floating projects for shallow water.”

The floating pilot, sited 28km offshore in 27-32 metres, is a bolt-on to developer China Three Gorges’ Yangxi West Shapa offshore wind farm phase 3, a 400MW project being built around monopile-based machines.

“This pilot will make an important contribution to future development of floating wind [farms] in shallow water,” said Chen, who is based in Ming Yang’s European headquarters in Hamburg, Germany.

China currently has a market-leading 4.4GW of offshore wind under construction, according to data from advocacy body the World Forum for Offshore Wind, as well as over 7GW in operation and as recently as 2019 was targeting having over 40GW installed by 2022.
Floating wind has fought a rearguard action for many years against being classed a deep-water technology, that is, only economic in depths of 50 metres or more, with semisub concept designers including BW Ideol and Principle Power arguing that in difficult seabed conditions moored platform-based turbines could produce at a levellised cost of energy (LCOE) competitive with bottom-fixed foundations.
Separately, Chen highlighted the importance of the ongoing scale-up of its offshore turbine designs – the OEM has an 11MW concept heading for market and is advancing a 15MW class design – and those of some its Chinese and international rivals, in relation to the pace of progress of floating in Asia and globally.

“We are ramping up the capacity of our turbine. We do know that globally these larger turbines are required [to support giga-scale projects in development] – a 15MW turbine is more and more ‘common’. And this is also [true] for floating: larger is better, because floating platforms are expensive, so we need to keeping bringing down the overall LCOE,” he said.

“During the development of our larger, next generation [15MW] turbine, we are already considering floating’s ‘characteristics’ in our initial design to have [those engineering considerations] really solved.

Chen also revealed MingYang was working on “multi-rotor” floating wind concept based around its turbines that would harness the “bigger capacity” of twin units mated to a single platform, a design idea currently being developed by companies including Hexicon, Aerodyn and W2Power.
Close to half of a vast 255GW fleet of floating wind turbines forecast for installation around the world by mid-century will be moored in Asia Pacific, according to recent calculations by DNV for a recent Recharge roundtable on the regional market.
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Published 19 May 2021, 12:05Updated 19 May 2021, 12:34
ChinaMing Yang Smart EnergyAsia-PacificChina Three GorgesHexicon