Gold futures decline, silver futures rise Tuesday

International gold prices fell while silver prices advanced on Tuesday.

As of the market close on the New York Mercantile Exchange, gold futures for June delivery dropped 0.46 percent to settle at 4,502.30 U.S. dollars per ounce, while silver futures for July delivery climbed 0.53 percent to 76.606 U.S. dollars per ounce.

China launched the world's largest offshore converter station, "Heart of Offshore Wind", from Nantong, east China's Jiangsu Province, on Wednesday, marking the entry of the ultra-high voltage direct current transmission era for the country.

Weighing 25,000 tons, the platform set sail to an offshore wind farm in Yangjiang City in south China's Guangdong Province for installation.

An offshore converter station serves as the "heart" of an offshore wind farm, collecting and stepping up the alternating current generated by individual wind turbines, converting it to high-voltage direct current, and then transmitting it to the onshore grid via subsea cables.

With a length of 85.5 meters, a width of 82.5 meters, and a height of 44 meters, the station's floor area is equivalent to that of a standard football pitch, and its height is roughly equivalent to a 15-story residential building.

"This is the world's first flexible direct-current offshore converter station rated at plus or minus 500 kilovolts and 2,000 megawatts, adopting a domestically pioneering modular and compact) power transmission system. Under limited space and weight constraints, through compact design, the electrical energy from all wind turbines across both wind farms is fully collected into this single substation, where voltage step-up and power conversion are completed. This significantly reduces the overall project cost while also saving offshore area," said Yang Bin, manager of the "Heart of Offshore Wind" project for the Guangdong branch of China Three Gorges Corporation.