China's first autonomous offshore wind power inspection platform begins operation

China's first autonomous offshore wind farm inspection platform was officially put into operation at the Rudong offshore wind power project in Jiangsu on Saturday, marking a breakthrough in the country's offshore wind power equipment operation and maintenance.

The platform, consisting of an unmanned vessel and a robot, can carry out remotely-controlled unmanned submarine cable inspections, extending the daily inspection range from the previous 10 kilometers to 100 kilometers, reducing the fault localization time by 90 percent.

It can also raise the detection accuracy by 10 times compared with the traditional method, which relies on manned vessels to tow passive detectors and requires a crew of at least nine people.

During operations, the unmanned vessel navigates to designated areas based on pre-programmed routes, autonomously deploying the robot for fault detection. By collecting submarine cable signals, the robot generates a detailed cable map and guides the unmanned vessel. This method allows the detector to get closer to the cable, significantly improving the detection accuracy.

The platform is developed by China Longyuan Power Group, a subsidiary of the China Energy Investment Group.

The intertidal offshore wind farm, located off the coast of Rudong County in Jiangsu, is the first wind farm that requires offshore wind turbines to be installed at areas of at least 10 kilometers offshore and in water depth of at least 10 meters.

This new breakthrough will provide strong support for China to build deep-sea and far-sea offshore wind farms in the future.

The U.S. dollar closed almost flat in late trading on Monday.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major peers, went up 0.01 percent to 98.035 at 3 p.m. (2000 GMT).

In late New York trading, the euro was down to 1.1767 dollars from 1.1777 dollars in the previous session, and the British pound added to 1.3507 dollars from 1.35 dollars in the previous session.

The U.S. dollar bought 156.03 Japanese yen, lower than 156.50 Japanese yen in the previous session. The U.S. dollar advanced to 0.7896 Swiss francs from 0.7891 Swiss francs, and it increased to 1.3684 Canadian dollars from 1.3672 Canadian dollars. The U.S. dollar rose to 9.1802 Swedish kronor from 9.16 Swedish kronor.