Introduction  In the backdrop of the increasingly scarce availability of sea-based wind farms in near-sea shallow water areas and the trend towards deeper and wider waters, as well as larger and more concentrated facilities, a discussion is presented on a distributed offshore wind energy system that integrates energy and transportation, in order to avoid the commonly encountered issues of large-scale offshore wind farms in open waters, such as extensive sea-area requirements and impacts on shipping safety.

  Method  Based on the existing or planned offshore wind farms in large ports, the best site was selected based on the built-in breakwaters that accompanied the port. After analyzing the functions and layouts of the port basin and the breakwater, the optimal layout of the offshore wind turbines and seabed cables was achieved through optimization. This could lead to improvements in technology, economics, policy, and environment in various aspects.

  Result  Compared to over a dozen existing offshore wind farms built in open waters in China, the distributed offshore wind farm based on energy and transportation can significantly reduce the scope of operations and the area required for construction the sea-area, also lower the impact on shipping in the surrounding area. Furthermore, it is a relatively safe, economic, and environmentally friendly type of offshore wind farm site.

  Conclusion  Through discussions on the selection and layout of distributed offshore wind farms based on energy and transportation, the advantages of this type of offshore wind farm, such as reducing the required sea area, minimizing marine obstacles, integrating supply and consumption, and reducing construction and operation costs, are described. This type of offshore wind farm can serve as an important supplement to the current single type of offshore wind farm and become a new type of incremental offshore wind farm site resource in the current stage.