Cutting costs for large offshore wind farms

Hitachi Energy has provided State Power Investment Corporation Limited (SPIC), one of China’s largest power companies, with the country’s first 220-kilovolt (kV) modular and prefabricated offshore grid connection for the 500-megawatt Shandong Peninsula South V wind farm off China’s northeast coast.

Thanks to Hitachi Energy’s innovative portfolio of Grid-eXpand modular and prefabricated grid connections, the compact, lightweight solution reduced the size of the platform by around 30 percent and the weight by about 20 percent, equivalent to around 700 tons of steel and other costly materials. This significantly lowered the cost of building the platform, towing it to the wind farm and erecting it on the seabed.

Crucially, the Grid-eXpand solution also cut the delivery time by eight weeks, compared to a conventional offshore grid connection. Each module was pre-engineered, pre-assembled and pretested before delivery, then shipped as a single prefabricated unit, ready for speedy erection on the platform at the shipyard.

The grid connection equipment - comprising Hitachi Energy switchgear and high-voltage products - far exceeds international benchmarks to ensure reliability and avoid costly unplanned maintenance in a remote, unmanned marine environment.

Cost Pressures

The global offshore wind market is booming in China. Of the 21.1 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity added globally in 2021, 80 percent was installed in China.¹ This was mainly driven by attractive feed-in tariffs, which came to an end in 2022.

“The offshore wind industry in China has entered a new era of grid parity, which places huge cost pressures on owner-developers like SPIC,” says Rui Wang, Project Manager at SPIC. “We selected Hitachi Energy for its expertise in offshore wind grid connections and its ability to provide a cost-reducing solution with fast-track delivery – our overriding priorities.”

The Hitachi Energy solution receives the power generated by 71 wind turbines at 35 kV and increases the voltage to an optimal 220 kV for transmission to the mainland power grid. The project is expected to generate 1.5 billion kWh annually, saving 460,000 tons of standard coal and 1.25 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year.² It will provide enough emission-free energy to power.

Hitachi Energy is the world’s leading supplier of grid connection solutions for the offshore wind industry, with an installed base covering almost half of all AC offshore wind farms globally, including China.