China has brought a massive offshore solar farm online – a full 1 gigawatt of photovoltaic capacity built at sea.
The Guohua Investment Shandong HG14 Offshore Photovoltaic Project is now online and operating commercially, according to China Energy Investment Corporation (CHN Energy). The project is being billed as the world’s first gigawatt-scale offshore solar plant. Built by China State Construction (CSCEC), it’s being billed as the world’s first gigawatt‑scale offshore solar plant.
The massive project sits in the eastern waters off Kenli District in Dongying City, in China’s Shandong Province. Once fully built out, it will have a planned capacity of 1,000 megawatts. CSCEC has already installed 930 offshore solar platforms.
When operating at full capacity, the project is expected to generate approximately 1.78 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. That’s enough to cover the annual power needs of roughly 2.67 million urban residents and about 60% of Kenli District’s total electricity demand.
Each solar platform is enormous. At 60 meters by 35 meters – roughly the size of five basketball courts – the platforms use bifacial, double‑glass solar panels that can capture both direct sunlight and reflected light off the sea surface.
Keeping something this large standing in open water is no small feat of engineering. The project uses a fixed‑pile foundation made from large steel trusses in what developers call a “four‑pile foundation plus solar platform” design. The panels are tilted at a carefully calibrated 15 degrees, allowing the structure to withstand force‑11 gales and winter ice conditions while cutting steel use by more than 10%. There’s also a box transformer onsite that sits on a platform.
“The project provides valuable experience for future offshore solar farm construction,” said Zhang Bo, deputy manager of the Kenli project at Guohua Energy Investment (via CGTN).
The offshore solar farm build also pushed China into new territory on construction tech. Developers created what they describe as the country’s first technical system for large‑scale PV projects, including an intelligent construction equipment cluster. A positioning system and smart leveling and pile-driving platform enable one-touch leveling and the simultaneous installation of four steel pipe piles per platform. So far, 3,720 piles have been driven into place.
To keep operations running safely offshore, the project also uses an intelligent supervision platform along with smart tide, wind, and wave forecasting systems designed to monitor conditions and support stable, long‑term operation.
With offshore wind already scaling rapidly in China, this project hints at how offshore solar could play a significant role in the country’s clean energy build‑out – especially in coastal regions where land is scarce, but electricity demand keeps climbing.
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