On March 22, 2023, a batch of 104-meter-long onshore wind turbine blades rolled off the production line at the Shaoshan factory of the Sany Renewable Energy Co., Ltd., setting a new world record for the longest onshore blades. These blades were designed to satisfy the demands of large-capacity wind turbine manufacturers in the future.

A batch of 104-meter-long onshore wind turbine blades rolled off the production line at the Shaoshan factory of the Sany Renewable Energy Co., Ltd. on March 22. (Photo/Tong Di, Hunan Daily)

Sany's Shaoshan Blade Factory, the world's first digital platform-based factory in the wind power industry, was unveiled on that day. Possessing the largest wind turbine blade workshop in Asia, this factory will produce 3,000 blades annually with the blade length measuring between 84 meters and 112 meters each.

Wind turbine blade production was labor-intensive in the past. Moreover, any quality flow might cause the scrapping of the whole blade. Currently, with the digital control system independently developed by the Sany Renewable Energy Co., Ltd. and the latest technologies such as man-machine interconnection and 5G, the whole manufacturing process and all technical indicators in the factory are uploaded onto and visible on the digital platform. 

Sany's Shaoshan Blade Factory is the world's first digital platform-based factory in the wind power industry, and has the largest wind turbine blade workshop in Asia. (Photo/Tong Di, Hunan Daily)

In the Shaoshan factory, conventional manual operations have been replaced by intelligent robots. With a notebook in their hands, the managers can make real-time monitoring of all important production indexes, even each technical indicator in every process. It is estimated that the Shaoshan factory's production efficiency is 20% higher than the conventional ones, the production time of a single blade is shortened to about 25 hours, and 66.4% of the industrial power of the factory is generated from its photovoltaic and wind power microgrid.

This article is from the Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Pang Yuehui

Chinese source: Voice of Hunan