A vessel’s giant crane collapsed during foundation installation at an offshore wind farm in the South China Sea.

The crane on the Yuhang 58 operated by Huadian Heavy Industries collapsed when its arm broke during monopile installation at the 500MW Guangdong Shanwei Houhu project being developed by China Guangdong Nuclear (CGN) 21km off Lufeng city, Guangdong province, in water depths of 23-27 metres.

There are no reports of any injuries following the incident, which happened last week. The extent of the damage to the crane and the vessel is unknown.

China’s offshore wind sector is currently in the middle of an installation frenzy as developers attempt to get 41GW of projects operational ahead of the lapsing of government subsidies at the end of 2021.

Shortage of available installation vessels has been cited as a big problem for the sector, with many projects tipped to miss the deadline due to supply-chain constraints.

Yuhang 58 — which has a lifting capacity of 3,800 tonnes — is owned by Jiangsu Yuhang Offshore Engineering, based in eastern China’s Jiangsu province.

Huadian Heavy Industries, a unit of one of China’s top five power utilities Huadian, won the bid from CGN to install the monopile in late July after a pricing bid of 343m yuan ($49m) against domestic rivals CRCC Harbour & Channel Engineering Bureau Group and Shanghai Boqiang Heavy Industries.

Guangdong Shanwei Houhu is set to use 91 5.5MW turbines once completed.

This article first appeared in Recharge's sister publication Upstream

Wind

Crane collapses as vessel works on offshore wind project off China