A carefully planned 'giant object transportation' has just been completed in the rippling waters of Nantong Port. Accompanied by the deep roar of a large hydraulic flatbed truck, a steel "giant" with a body size comparable to a football field and a height of nearly 25 floors - the conduit frame of the Sanshan Island offshore converter station - slowly "walked" onto a specially designed ship and sat steadily. On March 31st, this behemoth built by Nantong Zhenhua Heavy Equipment Manufacturing Co., Ltd. in China completed roll on/roll off loading and is about to sail towards the deep blue sea. Its destination is located in the waters of Three Mountains Island in Yangjiang, South China Sea. There, it will shoulder an epoch-making mission: as the "anchor of the sea", firmly rooted in the seabed, and supporting the "super heart" of the world's largest offshore wind power flexible DC transmission project - the offshore converter station.

Set a new record

The pipeline rack used for this sea voyage is the core foundation of the Yangjiang Sanshan Island offshore wind power flexible DC transmission project. It is 97 meters long, 75 meters wide, and 76 meters high, with a total weight of over 14000 tons. This data undoubtedly makes it the largest and heaviest pipeline support product in China, truly a "sea giant". Its design and construction integrate the latest technology and capabilities of China's high-end offshore equipment manufacturing. Its successful completion and going global is itself a major engineering miracle, marking China's world leading level in the manufacturing of ultra large offshore steel structures.

Convert green energy

The ultimate mission of the duct rack is to provide a rock solid home for the "super heart" of the entire project - the offshore converter station. This converter station platform will be like an energy processing plant on the sea, standing tall on the waves. Its core task is to efficiently "digest" clean wind energy captured by hundreds of wind turbines in the surrounding vast sea area, collect, convert, and "purify" it into stable and high-quality electricity. Subsequently, the electricity will be transmitted through a 500 kV DC submarine cable and "relay" with onshore lines to form a 293 kilometer long energy artery, which will directly deliver the surging green electricity to the power load centers in the Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area.

Leading global technology

The significance of the entire Sanshan Island project goes far beyond the success of a single individual project. After its completion, the offshore wind power transmission capacity will reach up to 2 million kilowatts, making it the world's largest offshore wind power flexible DC project in terms of transmission capacity. This project has successfully overcome a series of world-class key technical challenges such as the transmission of deep-sea flexible direct current, and is a concentrated demonstration and significant leap in China's deep-sea wind power development technology. The green benefits it brings are equally astonishing: it is expected to deliver approximately 6 billion kilowatt hours of clean electricity annually to the Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area, enough to meet the annual electricity needs of about 2.4 million households. This is equivalent to installing a continuously operating 'green engine' for the high-quality development of the Greater Bay Area.

As this ten thousand ton "sea fixing needle" sails towards the deep sea, China's strength in clean energy development and high-end marine engineering is once again confirmed. It not only lays the most solid foundation for the subsequent offshore installation and overall promotion of the Sanshan Island project, but also indicates that China is moving towards deeper and bluer horizons with solid steps on the road to building a new energy system and achieving the "dual carbon" goal.Editor/Yang Meiling