On January 24, the 2026 China Wind Energy New Year Tea Party was held in Beijing. At this prestigious event, NGC's proprietary offshore 16MW front-integrated doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) gearbox was honored with the "China Wind Energy Pioneer Award," recognizing its outstanding technological innovation and promising market application prospects. This award is presented every year, with a particular focus on cutting-edge innovations in the wind energy sector while also encouraging the deep integration of technological advances and engineering applications. It serves as a significant indicator for high-quality development in the industry.
Previously, NGC's fully integrated medium-speed drivetrain gearboxes for offshore 16–18 MW and 20–22 MW applications were awarded the "Global Best Drivetrain Gold Prize" by the world-renowned media outlet Wind Power Monthly. This highlights the company's outstanding expertise and continuous innovation capabilities in wind energy transmission technology. Winning the "China Wind Energy Pioneer Award" this time further underscores the industry's thorough recognition of NGC's technological prowess.
Main Shaft Integrated DFIG Gearbox – Born for Large-Scale Offshore Development
The global offshore wind energy industry is booming, rapidly moving toward larger individual turbine capacities. As part of this trend, the industry is facing a key challenge: how to effectively increase equipment power while ensuring operational reliability and reducing total lifecycle costs. This has become the core focus of technological breakthroughs in the industry. Against this backdrop, NGC has been leveraging its broad technological expertise and innovative capabilities, successfully developing a Main Shaft Integrated DFIG Gearbox for offshore wind turbines that addresses these industry-wide technological bottlenecks. This achievement undoubtedly injects new momentum into the development of the offshore wind energy industry.
This spindle-integrated double-fed gearbox boasts a wide array of impressive features. With a rated power up to 16MW and the potential for further upgrading to 18MW, it is well-positioned to meet the demands of large-scale development in offshore wind energy. In terms of structural design, it features an advanced 3P1H configuration. Through innovative integrated design of the input end and the main shaft, the gearbox features an exceptionally compact transmission system, allowing the equipment to operate more efficiently within limited space while significantly improving operational stability. This provides a solid guarantee for stable power generation in offshore wind farms. Notably, the modular design concept runs throughout the gearbox. Each module is relatively independent yet closely connected, ensuring high maintainability of the equipment on the tower. When a specific module fails, maintenance personnel can quickly locate and replace it without the need for extensive disassembly of the entire gearbox. This reduces both complexity and cost of later-stage operation and maintenance, shortens downtime, and improves power generation efficiency.
Integrating Multiple Core Technologies for Large-Scale Application in Offshore Wind Energy Projects
To address the harsh, complex operating conditions of offshore wind energy applications, this gearbox integrates a suite of core technologies. Through an optimized design of multi-planetary gear parameters and various breakthroughs in sliding bearing technology independently developed by NGC, its torque density has successfully exceeded 260+ N·m/kg. This marks a significant technological breakthrough and demonstrates the company’s core capabilities in lightweight design. In order to balance cost control and reliability, NGC innovatively applied tried and tested, cost-effective doubly-fed gearbox technology from onshore applications to a 16MW-class offshore wind turbine gearbox. This approach ensures high reliability while also controlling costs, providing a more economical solution for the large-scale application of offshore wind energy projects.
NGC’s newly launched main shaft integrated doubly-fed gearbox for offshore wind turbines not only showcases the company’s technological strength in offshore wind energy applications, but also provides solid support for the sustainable development of the global offshore wind industry. The company is now poised to lead the industry to new heights.
As a globally renowned enterprise specializing in wind energy gearboxes, NGC’s products have been widely deployed in various wind farm environments across more than 30 countries and regions throughout the world. The recent recognition of its 16MW front-integrated doubly-fed gearbox with an authoritative industry award represents both the recognition of NGC’s technological innovation capabilities and full affirmation of its contribution to the high-quality development of the offshore wind energy industry. Moving forward, NGC will continue to uphold the philosophy of innovation-driven development, deepen research in wind energy transmission technology, and launch even more high-end products tailored to the needs of the new energy industry. This is set to inject much needed momentum into global energy transition and the realization of "Dual Carbon" goals.