Chinese utility Power China Huadong Engineering Corporation is mulling over the construction of a 1,100 MW high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line which would connect Chinese offshore wind parks to the mainland. The company has contracted the certification body DNV GL to provide technical advisory support on feasibility studies for the power transmission project, which could connect a 1.1 GW offshore wind farm some 90 km off the coast of Jiangsu Province in eastern China.
Chinese authorities are looking forward to developing the domestic offshore wind power generation capacity and target 5 GW by 2020. In 2017 alone, roughly 1.2 GW was added to the grid, bringing the cumulative total installed capacity to nearly 2.8 GW. However, all the promising sites located within 10 km of the mainland have already been exploited, which means that the 2020 objective can only be attained if locations that are further offshore are exploited.
For this purpose, a HVDC line is required as submarine high-voltage alternating current (HVAC) are inefficient and unable to transport large amounts of power over such long distances.