The first monopile, 76 meters long and weighing 105 tonnes, was installed in late June at the planned offshore site at Baxianjiao, Rudong.
China Huaneng Group, which develops, constructs, operates and manages projects, is developing the Rudong offshore wind farm, which will use 50 turbines of 4MW and 20 turbines of 5MW over an 82 square kilometre sea area. The nearest turbine will be 14 kilometres off the coast.
The first batch of machines will be commissioned at the end of 2016, and are expected to generate 746 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year.
It is the first offshore wind project for Huaneng. The state-owned utility conglomerate, the biggest electricity-generating corporation in China, owns or operates a total of 151.87GW of installed power-generating capacity, as of the end of March, of which 27% is from clean and renewable sources.
According to the Chinese Wind Energy Association, Huaneng has developed around 13.13GW wind capacity by the end of 2014, ranking the second after Guodian, which recorded approximately 20.54GW.
Last year Huaneng installed 2.45GW in China, accounting for 10.57% of the total new wind capacity built in the country in 2014.
