The first two of roughly 500 offshore wind turbine foundations have been designed and fabricated for Chinese developer State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC).
The Ramboll-designed monopiles, made by Huadian Heavy Industries, will be installed as part of a pipeline being developed by SPIC subsidiary Guangdong Offshore Wind Power.
SPIC has secured permits for the installation of 3.2GW of offshore wind energy off the Guangdong coast.
The foundations are the largest in the world, weighing in at 1600 tonnes each, and will be installed in water depths of 37 metres, the deepest in China to date.
The offshore wind projects will be located near the rapidly growing Chinese cities Shenzhen and Jieyang.
SPIC Guangdong Electric Power chief engineer Zhang Yi said: “In this province we see an increasing demand for energy as well as a demand to reduce air pollution in the cities.
“We can meet the demand from the population for clean energy with wind energy, which can now commercially compete with coal and other fossil fuels. So we need this wind farm now and we need it fast.”
Ramboll completed the design of the two monopiles so that their fabrication took less than five months, which is 2-3 times faster than usual, according to Ramboll global market director Soren Juel Petersen.
The engineering group’s work included consulting on geotechnical and met ocean investigations and providing its proprietary offshore structural analysis to calculate how the turbines, earthquakes, waves, current and tide will impact the structures and how they will react to typhons.
The Guangdong region was hit by 18 typhoons during the 2018 season.