On August 6, in the waters of the Pearl River Estuary Basin, 200 kilometers southeast of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, the world's first 16-megawatt tension-leg floating wind power platform, "Haiyou Anlan," was successfully connected to the Lufeng Oilfield power grid, supplying green electricity directly to the offshore oilfield. This is China's first tension-leg floating wind power platform and also the world's tension-leg floating wind power platform with the deepest applied water depth, the farthest offshore distance, and the largest single-unit capacity, marking that China's deep-sea floating wind power equipment technology has advanced to the forefront of the world and successfully exploring a new technological route for China's offshore wind power development.

What is the difference between a tension-leg floating wind power platform and a traditional offshore wind turbine? "Most traditional offshore wind turbines are fixed-type, for example, by driving huge pile foundations into the seabed to support the turbine. This method is relatively mature in shallow waters, but when offshore wind power moves toward the deep sea, the pile foundations become longer and heavier, steel consumption surges, and construction difficulty and costs rise simultaneously, greatly reducing economic efficiency." said Yu Yingping, project leader of "Haiyou Anlan." When the water depth exceeds 60 meters, the economic efficiency of fixed-type turbines drops significantly, and floating wind power platforms become a more advantageous technological choice, with the tension-leg type being an important technical route among floating wind power platforms.

A tension-leg floating wind power platform consists of a floating body, subsea anchoring foundations, and a mooring system. Taking "Haiyou Anlan" as an example, the platform base is a triangular floating body structure with a side length of about 100 meters. The upper floating body provides enormous buoyancy to "push" upward, while nine vertically taut steel cables beneath the platform, namely the "tension legs," are tightly connected to the subsea anchoring foundations, "pulling" the floating body downward. The two forces of "one push and one pull" firmly "pin" the platform to the sea surface.

Yu Yingping said that the tension-leg floating wind power platform has outstanding advantages in stability and steel consumption per megawatt, and uses a smaller sea area, greatly alleviating the conflict between offshore wind power development and traditional marine utilization activities, and will be more conducive to the efficient and intensive use of marine space.

Behind the technological advantages are challenges. The tension-leg floating wind power platform is also internationally recognized as the most technically difficult floating wind power solution, and there was no prior application precedent in China. "Haiyou Anlan" has an overall height of nearly 110 stories and a total weight of 7,800 tons. The sea area where it is located faces complex sea conditions such as frequent typhoons, and the steel cables must withstand enormous tension over the long term and other severe tests. In addition, the rigidity of the main structure and construction precision are extremely demanding, and every step from equipment design to construction and transportation faces enormous challenges.

Feng Dong, an engineer on the "Haiyou Anlan" project, said that the successful implementation of "Haiyou Anlan" lies in giving full play to the advantages of the new nationwide system, with central state-owned enterprises and private enterprises collaborating in innovation and joint research. A number of leading domestic manufacturing and processing enterprises jointly participated in research, development, and manufacturing, breaking through technical bottlenecks, and a large number of components are world firsts.

It is understood that "Haiyou Anlan" is equipped with a 16-megawatt typhoon-resistant wind turbine, with a swept area of 53,000 square meters, equivalent to 7.5 standard football fields. After being put into operation, it is expected to provide 54 million kilowatt-hours of green electricity to the oilfield each year, enough to meet the electricity demand of 70,000 people for a year, equivalent to saving 15,000 cubic meters of fuel oil and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 35,000 tons.

According to an assessment by the National Climate Center, deep-sea offshore wind energy resources are the key source of future incremental space for offshore wind power. The outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan clearly states that offshore wind power bases will be built in the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea, deep-sea wind power development will be promoted in a standardized and orderly manner, and the cumulative grid-connected installed capacity of offshore wind power will reach more than 100 million kilowatts.

"China is rich in deep-sea wind energy resources. To better develop these resources, we must change wind turbines from being 'inserted into the seabed' to 'floating on the sea surface.'" Feng Dong believes that tension-leg floating wind power platforms have broad development space in the future and are expected to become a "new growth curve" for deep-sea wind power development.

People's Daily (August 26, 2026, Page 18)