First Day 2024: World's largest ultra-high-altitude wind farm starts operation in China

The world's largest ultra-high-altitude wind power generation project, built at an altitude of 4,650 meters, started operation in Nagqu Town, Seni District of Nagqu City, southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region on Monday, the first day of 2024.

For wind projects, a plant built at an altitude of 3,500 to 5,500 meters is considered ultra-high, according to the China Energy Investment Corporation (China Energy), the project's developer. 

With a capacity of 100 megawatts (MW), the wind farm is designed to provide 200 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of annual electric power to 230,000 residents living in Nagqu City. 

The project has 25 wind turbines, covering an area of over 140,000 square meters.

Standing at high altitude

Because of the ultra-high altitude, the wind farms have to withstand the severe climatic conditions of the plateau.

"In the early stage of our design, we adopted a smart wind power platform to conduct accurate assessment of wind measurement, site selection and wind resources, developing an integrated design of the wind farm," Hu Jiansheng, head of the 100MW wind power project, told China Media Group (CMG).

"With stability control technology, we have overcome the problems caused by the ultra-high altitude, including the low efficiency of wind energy conversion and the deceleration of wind turbines' blades," said Hu. 

Wind turbines there are exposed to extreme weather such as hail and lightning, as well as damage caused by UV rays, drastic changes in temperature, and frequent erosion by wind, sand, rain and snow. And because of that, the blades have to be of exceptional high quality.

He told CMG that they had also invented a special technique to spray the outer layer of the paint to effectively prevent it from turning too dry and crispy, mitigating the aging of other exposed parts of the wind turbines. 

Before the operation, staff members of China Energy carried out a final round of inspection on the wind turbines to tackle difficulties brought by the high altitude.

Qin Min, operator of the 100MW wind power project, told CMG that, "all turbines here have been debugged, and all primary equipment and collector lines have been charged as well. Today is the first day of the new year, I'm very happy, also very excited, looking forward to our station connecting to the grid with full capacity for power generation."