CR:Windpower Monthly
With 260-metre rotor and 18MW rating, CSSC Haizhuang has broken records with its new offshore turbine: the H260-18MW. But it’s only one in a series of breathtaking launches from the Chinese company. Here’s all you need to know…
The past two years have seen an explosion in turbine developments from the Chinese wind industry – with many innovations dwarfing western OEMs’ configurations.
China’s CSSC Haizhuang has just unveiled its H260-18MW offshore turbine last December– but there’s much more from the corporation that’s catching the industry’s eye. To save you searching the web to discover what’s important, we’ve picked the five leading pieces of news.
1 The onshore turbine innovations
It’s not just about the big offshore engineering: a standout development is CSSC Haizhuang’s onshore flagship wind turbine: the H206-7.XMW. Based on CSSC Haizhuang’s high-speed double-fed platform, the turbines are headed to the Gobi and various other desert areas in northern China – tough, onshore landscapes that demand suitable and efficient turbines.
The H206-7.XMW has a compact drive-train, an ultra-long, lightweight blade and has prioritised reliability in its design. As it’s convenient to transport and erect, it’s significantly helping China create vast-output farms in difficult terrains.
2 High-tower technology
China’s huge and varied landscape leads to different demands in different places. CSSC Haizhuang has risen to this challenge developing a segmented steel-concrete tower to help withstand some of the low wind-speed and high wind-shear found in central&eastern China plain.
The newest innovation about concrete-steel tower technology is the prestressed concrete-filled steel tubular lattice one, in which the upper still adopts the traditional steel structure tower, and the lower part is welded by four corner columns of concrete-filled steel tubular and crossed&inclined hollow steel pipe. The longitudinal prestressed reinforcement is applied in the concrete-filled steel tube corner column. And using this technology, CSSC Haizhuang has installed its first 165m-tall in the Shandong province of China.
3 Industry awards: turbine of the year 2022 top-10
As rotor sizes and ratings continue to climb, OEMs are looking to different drive technologies to push scaling to new limits. This is why Windpower Monthly’s Turbine’s of the Year 2022 listed CSSC Haizhuang’s H236-8.XMW offshore turbine. Designed as an affordable product with medium-speed drivetrain, it is most suitable for low and medium wind-speed sea areas as well as typhoon condition sea areas.
The industry is paying significant attention to China’s innovations – and this top-10 accolade illustrates the heads companies like CSSC Haizhuang are now turning out.
4 China’s first deep-sea floating offshore turbine
The Fuyao – that’s its name: CSSC Haizhuang’s floating offshore turbine, equipped with a 6.2MW typhoon-resistant turbine and a rotor diameter of 152m, is, according to the company, the largest floating turbine equipment in China. The floating platform has a length of 72m, a draught of 33m and a width of 80m, with the tower standing 78m tall and the centre height of the hub standing 96m.
The Fuyao is suitable for a water depth of no less than 50m and a sea flow of no less than 3.5 metres per second. This is a turbine built for extreme sea conditions.
But it’s not just the turbines that are in the company’s plans. CSSC Haizhuang is developing smart floating islands to provide commercial leisure and entertainment services. These developments will feature self-sufficient energy production from a combination of FOW power, photovoltaic power, tidal power and more.
5 And finally… the world’s largest wind turbine
The H260-18MW has a rotor diameter of 260m and an individual capacity of 18MW, making it the largest and the most powerful wind turbine currently on the market or under development.
The H260-18MW has a sweep area of 53,000 square metres and at full wind speed it will generate 44.8 kilowatt-hours of electricity per revolution.
According to CSSC Haizhuang, more than 80 per cent of the turbine’s components come from Chinese enterprises, besides, more than 99 percent of the major components such as the blades, the gearbox and the generator come from the CSSC group. As it has used such a localised approach, the delivery and development are avoiding supply-chain bottlenecks.