China’s first offshore wind farm with a capacity above 5 MW is scheduled to be put into operation and connected to the national power grid in mid-September, China Three Gorges Corporation (CTGC), the developer of the project declared recently.

The wind farm is located in Xinghua Bay, southeastern China’s Fujian province. A total of 14 high-output wind turbines from eight domestic and foreign enterprises will be installed to finalize the optimized turbine model for the region.

Given breakthroughs that have been made in high-power wind turbine technologies, an offshore high-tech, large-capacity wind power industry has been established in Fujian. It marked a new stage in the large-scale development of China’s offshore wind power industry.

The first phase of the project was initiated in November 2016 by CTGC with an investment of 1.8 billion RMB ($27.6 million), becoming the world’s first international prototype test site for an offshore high-output wind farm.

Fujian has the most offshore wind power resources in China, and even in Asia at large. The number of its annual utilization hours could reach 4,000, twice the amount of that in Inner Mongolia, which currently ranks first in the country in terms of installed wind power capacity.

Though the offshore wind power generating industry does not have a long history, it has been experiencing rapid development in recent years. Statistics show that wind power accounts for 16% of the world’s generating capacity from renewable resources.

China’s installed capacity of offshore wind farms will reach 15,000 MW. In addition, a batch of demonstration projects of offshore wind farms will be completed with improved technologies.