Original title: Somewhere in the Minnan Sea, 30 kilometers from the nearest shoreline, a rotor sweeping 10 football fields just started turning, and the weight of what hangs 174 meters above the water rewrote every offshore wind record on earth
The turbine, jointly developed by China Three Gorges Corporation and Goldwind, was installed on 13 January 2026 at a water depth exceeding 40 meters. Its 300-meter rotor diameter and 174-meter hub height make it the largest single-unit machine ever placed in any ocean. Each 147-meter blade is longer than the wingspan of the largest passenger aircraft, and the nacelle-hub-blade assembly sits under 40 tons per megawatt — more than 20 percent lighter than the industry average. The prototype is projected to produce over 80 GWh annually, enough for roughly 44,000 average households. It carries LiDAR wind measurement, blade root load sensors, and a multidimensional early warning system, and is designed to withstand super typhoons with wind speeds above 60 meters per second.
Context
It follows the August 7 commissioning of Ming Yang's 16 MW tension leg platform floating turbine at the CNOOC Anlan site off Guangdong, which was then the largest floating unit installed.
