The total installed capacity of China Energy Investment Corporation Co., Ltd. (CHN Energy) surpassed 400 gigawatts on June 22 when the No 9 unit of its Qiyuan Offshore Wind Farm was successfully connected to the grid in Dongfang County in South China’s Hainan Province.
This milestone indicates that the installed capacity of CHN Energy now accounts for 10 percent of the national total installed capacity, which stands at approximately 4,000 GW.
The wind power project in Dongfang is the corporation’s first offshore wind power project in Hainan and is the southernmost one in China that is operational.
During its construction, the project team optimized the layout of wind turbines to avoid the seasonal activity areas of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Chinese white dolphins). When installing submarine cable lines, they adopted an innovative horizontal directional drilling technique, thereby minimizing impacts on coastal vegetation and the nearshore ecological environment. They also employed drones to conduct magnetic-field detection to facilitate the entire installation — two 1,536-meter protective conduits were installed in only 31 days.
Upholding a new energy security strategy, CHN Energy has established clean and efficient coal power plants in areas in great demand and has built multiple large-scale clean energy bases, such as offshore wind farms, in recent years. Its installed capacity has consistently increased, from over 300 GW in August 2023 to over 400 GW this June, which is also a new record for global energy enterprises.
CHN Energy’s installed capacities of thermal and wind power both rank first in the world, with renewable energy exceeding 41 percent of its total installed capacity.
As of the end of May, the corporation had put into operation 65 ultra-supercritical coal-fired generating units with a capacity of 1 GW each, accounting for nearly 30 percent of the national total of the same type. It has built multiple gigawatt-scale wind power clusters in Northwest, North and Northeast China. The corporation’s installed capacity of photovoltaic power has grown by leaps and bounds, with several large photovoltaic bases deployed in Northwest China’s desert, Gobi, and arid regions. It has advanced the cascade development of hydropower resources in the basins of Dadu, Jinsha and Kaidu rivers, and has explored integrated energy development models — for example, the electricity generated by wind and solar power can be stored to produce hydrogen, and hydrogen, which in itself is a kind of energy, can be used to generate electricity. CHN Energy has built 8.01 GW/19.21 GWh of new energy storage capacity, significantly enhancing its ability to integrate, balance, and dispatch renewable energy resources.
CHN Energy is reaping the fruit of wide-ranging achievements in its power generation sector. To name just a few, the Beilun Power Plant in Zhejiang Province remains the world’s largest-capacity thermal power plant, and the Anji Power Plant, also in Zhejiang, has China’s largest-capacity and most efficient gas power units. Its new energy base in the Tengger Desert in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is the first one in the country with a capacity of over 10 GW, serving as a replicable and promotable example for other countries. The Shuangjiangkou Hydropower Station on the Dadu River in Sichuan Province has the world’s highest dam, demonstrating how to build a dam in high-altitude, harsh alpine environments.
CHN Energy leveraged big data, cloud computing and the Internet of Things technologies to establish a “Cornerstone” smart dispatch platform, to efficiently coordinate and dispatch its power generation capabilities. It has launched the “Qingyuan” artificial intelligence model that can help with energy conservation, malfunction diagnosis, and unit operation and maintenance. Regarding digital transformation of conventional power stations that consume thermal and hydro power, it has constructed a series of smart power plants, where it employs digital twins, intelligent sensing and unmanned inspection technologies to conduct real-time monitoring, precise fault prediction and automated operational optimization.
CHN Energy is committed to advancing the power generation sector from a conventional model to an intelligent, efficient and sophisticated one, so as to continuously contribute to building the new power system in China.
(Executive editor: Zuo Shihan)
