China Three Gorges Building Two New Wind Farm Installation Vessels

The China Three Gorges (CTG) Corporation is building two offshore wind farm installation vessels, one at CSSC Huangpu Wenchong Shipbuilding yard and one at China Merchants Heavy Industry (CMHI) yard in Jiangsu.

CSSC is building a 2000-tonne wind turbine installation vessel (WTIV) for CTG and CMHI will deliver a 3000-tonne heavy lift vessel for the company, whose offshore wind development arm, CTG Renewables, just announced its Yangjiang Shapa (Shaba) project became China’s first gigawatt-range offshore wind farm.

Finland-based marine equipment manufacturer Wärtsilä reported that it received orders for the two vessels from the two Chinese shipyards in May 2021.

Wärtsilä will supply the steerable and tunnel thrusters for CTG’s two new vessels.

Each of the vessels will have an optimised thruster configuration consisting of WST-32FP main propulsion units and relevant WTT transverse thruster sizes. The future-proof design of the thrusters features high redundancy for less energy consumption, and proven reliability. They also comply with applicable environmental regulations with the use of Environmentally Acceptable Lubricants (EAL), Wärtsilä said.

“Wind power is becoming increasingly important for China, and we are building these two ships on a fast-track schedule to support this programme. We appreciate Wärtsilä’s ability to deliver the thrusters in line with our timetable. Their local engineering and project management assistance is of great value to us”, said Wang Peng, Project Manager at China Three Gorges Corporation.

China is expected to boost its offshore wind power generation capacity to 50 GW by the end of 2029. The aim is to reach 10 per cent of the country’s total wind power generation capacity, which currently is at 3 per cent.