en.Wedoany.com Reported - At 14:18 on June 4, after nearly seven hours of intensive work in the waters off Yangjiang, Guangdong, the world's largest offshore converter station—"Heart of the Sea Breeze"—was precisely docked with its jacket structure, lifted by the semi-submersible transport vessel "Xiangtaikou," marking the successful installation of the world's largest offshore converter station.
The installed "Heart of the Sea Breeze" consists of two parts: an upper module and a lower foundation. The upper module is a seven-story steel structure building, measuring 85.5 meters long, 82.5 meters wide, and 44 meters high, with a total weight of approximately 25,000 tons. The lower jacket structure is 82 meters long, 57 meters wide, and 69 meters high, with eight main pipes at the base for connecting and supporting the upper module, corresponding to eight sets of leg coupling devices and eight sets of insertion tips, with a total weight of about 17,000 tons.
Due to the weight of the "Heart of the Sea Breeze" far exceeding the lifting capacity of Chinese ship machinery, the project team adopted the advanced "float-over installation" technique. Unlike traditional lifting methods, the float-over technique primarily utilizes tidal natural forces and the ship's dynamic positioning system to slowly "reverse park" the upper module, with a clearance of only 150 millimeters on each side from the jacket foundation. During this process, rubber fenders and leg coupling devices mitigate collisions between the upper module and the jacket foundation, enabling precise alignment between the insertion tips and legs.
Compared to conventional nearshore booster stations, the construction site is over 70 kilometers offshore with no nearshore support, facing multiple challenges such as strong winds, high currents, heavy salt spray corrosion, and frequent typhoons. To find the precise float-over installation window and ensure that environmental data such as wind, waves, and currents are within the design values, the project team, based on cross-verification and testing of multiple fixed-point weather forecasts, ultimately scheduled the float-over installation for around 7:00 AM on June 4.
It is understood that the project team controlled the ship's draft through precise ballast adjustments and relied on the ship's power system positioning to maintain attitude and position, successfully guiding the upper module into the pre-fixed jacket foundation slot on the seabed, ultimately completing the installation smoothly. The successful application of this float-over installation technology ensured the safe transport and precise installation of the tens-of-thousands-ton steel structure in the complex deep-sea environment, laying a solid foundation for the subsequent full-capacity grid connection of the offshore wind farm.
With the positioning of the "Heart of the Sea Breeze," the Three Gorges Yangjiang Qingzhou Phase V and VII offshore wind power projects have taken a critical step. As the world's highest voltage level and largest transmission capacity offshore wind power flexible DC transmission project, once fully operational, it will deliver approximately 6 billion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity annually to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, equivalent to reducing nearly 5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
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