On December 29, 2025, all wind turbines of the 850-megawatt offshore wind power project developed by Jiangsu Guoxin Investment Group Limited (JSGX) in Dafeng District of Yancheng, East China’s Jiangsu Province were connected to the grid. Through this, the large-scale development of offshore wind power in Jiangsu Province has reached a new level, which will further consolidate Jiangsu’s leading position in the installed capacity of offshore wind power in China.
Following the commissioning of the 350-megawatt offshore wind power project developed by Jiangsu Haili Wind Power Equipment Technology Co., Ltd., in Rudong County, Jiangsu Province in 2021, the Dafeng project is another important offshore energy operation developed by JSGX in the waters of Jiangsu Province, and also one of the major projects of the province in 2025.
Located in the offshore area southeast of Xinyang Port and northeast of Dafeng Port, the project consists of four sites, covering a planned sea area of 136 square kilometers. A total of 100 wind turbines have been installed, each unit with an installed capacity of 8.5 megawatts and the total reaching 850 megawatts. Two offshore booster stations and one onshore switching station have been built as supporting facilities. It is the largest in terms of both individual project capacity and number of wind turbines installed among all the offshore wind power projects commissioned in Jiangsu Province during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25).
Refined engineering management fuels faster construction
Since the offshore project started in the end of February 2025, the project team has efficiently advanced the construction while overcoming various challenges. They innovatively implemented new management mechanisms and established a replicable safety control system for hazardous and major projects.
For example, the team assigned one dedicated person in charge of each wind turbine’s installation location, formulated specific construction plans for each wind turbine according to various installation conditions, and immediately organized the team members to summarize the experience, problems and improvement solutions in the operation process after each hoisting operation.
Through refined organization, the team successfully completed the construction of the longest and heaviest steel pipe piles in Jiangsu Province to date (98 meters in length and weighing 1,679 metric tonnes per pile), reaching a new height in engineering management and technical capabilities.
The first group of units were connected to the grid in only four months, generating the first kilowatt-hour of electricity in the offshore wind power’s grid-parity era in Jiangsu Province. The project took just ten months from start to full-capacity grid connection and commissioning, setting a new record for offshore wind power construction. To date, the cumulative power generation of the project has reached 243 million kilowatt-hours.
Intelligent construction operations address new challenges at sea
The natural environment of the Yellow Sea waters is extremely complex, with frequent extreme weather such as typhoons and cold waves, making the annual period for effective operation very short and posing numerous challenges to project construction. Facing such difficult conditions, the project team built multiple digital platforms including the intelligent construction management and control system, the sea area early warning system and the submarine cable laying monitoring system, realizing real-time visual management and control as well as intelligent early warning of all elements including personnel, vessels, environment and engineering. As a result, the utilization rate of the effective operation period was increased by 20 percent.
The team innovatively adopted inclined pile jacket foundation installation technology for offshore booster stations, achieving a strong connection between modules and foundations through processes such as welding and pile tip grouting. Combined with standardized operation procedures and precise scheduling modes, it not only saved about 20 percent of the project cost, but also ensured quality and safety for the construction.
As China’s first case of cross-cabin intelligent inspection applied in offshore booster stations, wheeled robots, intelligent cabin doors and auxiliary door-crossing devices were innovatively put into use for the first time in the Dafeng project. This reduced the need for regular manual inspection trips at sea. Relying on technological research, the project has achieved a number of results. It issued the association standards for the construction requirements for the upper block of offshore booster stations, and it won two provincial and ministerial awards and one municipal first-class award for scientific and technological progress.
Collaborative sci-tech innovation strengthens green new industry
With this project as a platform, JSGX is taking the lead in undertaking the national key research and development initiative on key technologies and applications for intelligent operation and maintenance of large-scale offshore wind farms. The group has joined hands with 15 well-known domestic universities, research institutions and industry-leading enterprises, including Tsinghua University, Southeast University, Hangzhou Dianzi University and Goldwind, to jointly tackle the core technical problems in operation and maintenance of large-scale offshore wind farms.
This initiative will further improve operation and maintenance efficiency and safety, reduce cost during the whole-life cycle, and promote the high-quality development of China’s offshore wind power industry. It is also actively exploring the coordinated development model integrating green power and green hydrogen and planning to build supporting hydrogen production facilities and an integrated industrial chain of power generation, hydrogen production, storage and transportation, and application, so as to open up new paths for the comprehensive utilization of renewable energy.
The full-capacity grid connection of the Dafeng project has laid a solid foundation for JSGX’s 1.55-gigawatt offshore wind power project during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30). After going into operation, the whole project is expected to generate 2.88 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, which can meet the annual demand for about 1 million households. It will save 870,000 metric tonnes of standard coal and reduce 2.39 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year, bringing more green energy in optimizing the regional energy structure, building a new type of power system and contributing to achieving the “dual carbon” goals.
(Executive editor: Yuan Ting)
