China Has Built and is Now Deploying the World’s Largest Offshore Wind Power Converter

 

      China has recently shipped the world’s largest offshore converter station for installation at sea. It is planned to connect two massive offshore wind farms to the national power grid.

     According to Interesting Engineering:

“The platform, a two-gigawatt (GW) energy hub named Haifeng Heart, was built by heavy-duty equipment manufacturer Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (ZPMC). It departed from the port city of Nantong in China’s Jiangsu Province on Wednesday, May 27.”

     Once installed, the converter is expected to deliver about six billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of wind-powered electricity per year. The converter is expected to support the Three Gorges Yangjiang Qingzhou V and Qingzhou VII offshore wind farms.

     The converter station is huge and required special manufacturing and assembly methods.

“The eight-story steel structure is about 281 feet (85.5 meters) long, 271 feet (82.5 meters) wide, and around 144 feet (44 meters) high. It also weighs an astonishing 25,000 tonnes (27,557 US tons).”

“It is among the largest offshore energy structures ever built. ZPMC revealed that it was constructed using a modular fabrication approach, with onshore assembly, equipment integration, and installation progressing in parallel. This placed high demands on supply chain coordination and production management.”

“Yan Bing, ZPMC senior specialist, stated that the company adopted an integrated construction model featuring “onshore assembly, transport as a single unit, and float-over installation.” This improved the efficiency and execution quality, while providing a model for future projects of this type.”

     With a single-unit transmission capacity of 2,000 megawatts (MW), it is the largest offshore converter station in the world and has set several other records as well. It is the world’s highest-voltage offshore wind flexible direct-current (DC) transmission system. It is expected to run at ±500 kilovolts (kV).

“It is the first offshore wind project to combine alternating current (AC) and DC transmission technologies within the same system. Additionally, the project is the first centralized offshore wind flexible DC transmission system of its kind.”

     It is also the first use of ±525 kV DC subsea cables for long-distance transmission of renewable energy generated offshore. The DC conversion near the source of the wind turbines reduces power losses compared to AC or compared to DC conversion further away from the generation source.

“By converting offshore AC into DC, they reduce transmission losses over long-distance subsea cables, unlocking access to high-quality wind resources located more than 100 kilometers [62 miles] from shore and supporting expansion into deeper and more remote waters,” ZPMC concluded

    

References:

 

World’s largest offshore wind converter with 6 billion kWh annual capacity heads to sea. Georgina Jedikovska. Interesting Engineering. May 29, 2026. World’s largest offshore wind converter with 6 billion kWh annual capacity heads to sea