State-owned energy major China Huaneng Group unveiled on Thursday the world's most powerful direct-drive floating offshore wind turbine in Fuqing, East China's Fujian Province, Xinhua News Agency reported.
With a single-unit capacity of 17 megawatts (MW) and a rotor diameter of 262 meters - the largest in the world - the rollout of the equipment marks a new breakthrough in China's offshore wind power exploration, according to China Huaneng.
The Huaneng-Dongfang Electric 17MW direct-drive floating offshore wind turbine features a rotor diameter of 262 meters. Its swept area spans approximately 53,000 square meters - equivalent to 7.5 standard soccer courts.
The hub center stands at a height of roughly 152 meters, comparable to a 50-story residential building.
The turbine boasts a time-based availability rate exceeding 99 percent. Engineered for extreme conditions, it can withstand massive waves over 24 meters high and endure ferocious typhoons up to level 17 with winds of up to 209 kilometers per hour.
Featuring domestic innovation, the wind turbine features China's first domestically produced large-diameter main shaft bearing, with all critical components - including blades, generator, converter, and transformer - achieving full localization.
The integration of an intelligent sensing system, which gives operators holistic stability control for the entire floating structure, enable the turbine to adapt to complex deep-sea environments and operate in waters exceeding 50 meters in depth, said Liu Xin, director of Offshore Wind Power at Huaneng Clean Energy Research Institute.
With an annual clean energy output of 68 million kilowatt-hours, a single unit can supply the annual electricity demand of approximately 40,000 households.
The turbine will, in the next phase, be towed to waters offshore Yangjiang, South China's Guangdong Province, for trial and validation, the company said.
The fresh development came as China leads global green energy development.
As a global leader in renewable energy, China's installed renewable energy capacity reached 2.09 billion kilowatts by May 2025, more than doubling that in 2020, officials from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country top economic planning agency, said at a press conference on Wednesday.
One in three kilowatt-hour of electricity in the country is now from green sources and China has the world's largest number of wind turbine installed capacity, according to NDRC.
China's wind growth remained stable but strong at 80 GW in 2024, according to a report by the International Energy Agency in May.
