Eight sets of jacket foundations for the Inch Cape offshore wind project were delivered in south China's city Zhuhai on Wednesday, marking the largest single-unit capacity offshore wind turbine jackets China has delivered to the European market to date.
The Wednesday delivery, with a total weight of 19,500 tons, equivalent to the total weight of some 15,000 cars, is the last batch of core components delivered to the project.
The tallest single jacket structure stands at 95.44 meters, as high as a 35-floor apartment building. Wang Tengfei, CNOOC Engineering's deputy project manager for the Inch Cape project, said the company pioneered a number of cutting-edge techniques in building the complicated structure.
"We achieved zero defect to hydraulic hoses and the closure precision at the sub-millimeter level. We independently developed high-strength steel welding technology, achieving a first-pass rate exceeding 99 percent," Wang said.
The total delivery of the wind project's components weigh over 60,000 tons all together, comprising 18 sets of jacket foundations with accompanying steel piles and 24 sets of connecting accessories.
The Inch Cape offshore wind farm is located in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland of the United Kingdom. The project has a total planned installed capacity of 1.08 gigawatts, which would meet half of all households in Scotland's electricity demands once fully operational.
Record-size offshore wind turbine jackets delivered to Europe
