Chapter 12: Soil response around Donghai offshore wind turbine foundation, China

Developments of sustainable energy, especially wind energy, have been rapidly advancing in recent decades. The total wind energy capacity in China had reached 44·73 GW by 2011. However, wind farms in China are onshore, except for the Donghai offshore wind farm (DH-OWF), and 89% of the wind power capacity is located in Northern China. In fact, the southeast coastal area has rich offshore wind resources, which could provide a good supplement for some coastal cities like Shanghai. According to the offshore development plan drawn up by Chinese coastal provinces, which identified potential projects for inter-tidal (at water depths less than 5’m) and offshore (at water depths 5–50 m) developments, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong and Fujian all hope to have a combined offshore cumulative installed capacity of some 10·1 GW by 2015 and 30 GW by 2020 (Rajgor, 2010).