country's deep-sea renewable energy development, the state-owned China Three Gorges Corporation (CTGC) has announced. At 3:12 a.m. last Friday, during a critical period for summer electricity demand, the first batch of units from the 800-megawatt offshore wind power project in Dafeng, east China's Jiangsu Province, was successfully connected to the grid as the blades of Unit 9 began to turn, the CTGC confirmed to Xinhua on Sunday.

Located northeast of Yancheng City, the Dafeng project consists of four subsites. Subsite H8-1 is the most distant, with its center located 80 kilometers offshore and its outermost point extending to 85.5 kilometers, making it the farthest grid-connected offshore wind power project in China so far. The wind farm comprises 98 wind turbines and three offshore booster stations, with a total installed capacity of 800 megawatts, according to the CTGC.

Discussing the major construction challenges, Shi Shuaishuai, the project manager, noted that the site is so far offshore that it takes six to seven hours by boat to reach the construction area one way. "We faced difficulties like large ocean swells, harsh weather conditions, and seabed sediment erosion," he said, adding that the construction team often held on-site meetings to address specific issues as they arose.

"We used our self-developed meteorological warning platform to precisely identify optimal weather windows. At peak periods, over 1,000 workers were working simultaneously at sea," Shi added. Liu Yu, another manager of the Dafeng project, said the wind farm is scheduled to achieve full-capacity grid connection by the end of December. It is expected to generate about 2.6 billion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity annually, which is enough to meet the yearly power needs of approximately 1.1 million households with three members each, Liu added. According to a National Energy Administration (NEA) report released this January, China's newly installed wind power capacity reached 79.82 million kilowatts in 2024, marking a year-on-year increase of 6 percent. This includes 75.79 million kilowatts from onshore wind and 4.04 million kilowatts from offshore wind. (Xinhua)