China Grid 'Loads Up' on Wind Generation

China is cautiously adding more wind generation to its renewable energy mix. According to Bloomberg (News - Alert), the nation intends to reach a cumulative 100 gigawatts (GW) of installed wind capacity by 2015 by approving deployments in areas where the grid can handle the load.

This week, China’s National Energy Administration formally approved the deployment of 28.7 GW of new wind generation—up from the 27.5 GW sanctioned in 2012. The newly approved plants, which include four pilot projects that will generate an aggregate 750 MW, probably will be developed from 2015 onward.

The permits exclude areas where demand on the grid already is hazardously high, including Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces.  China has been working to expand and upgrade its grid to fully accommodate fast-multiplying wind turbines in remote, wind-rich areas.

The nation’s overall wind energy resource is staggering. Harvard researchers estimate that China’s wind generation potential is 12 times larger than its 2010 electricity consumption. Indeed, wind energy in China now accounts for 5.3 percent of the country’s generating capacity and supplies about two percent of its electricity—placing it behind only coal and hydro power.

What’s more, according to the Earth Policy Institute, wind has overtaken nuclear as an electricity source in China. In 2012, wind farms generated two percent more electricity than nuclear power plants did—a gap that Washington, DC-based think tank believes “will likely widen dramatically over the next few years as wind surges ahead.”

China’s top three wind developers are Longyuan, Huaneng, and Datang, in that order. Longyuan is a subsidiary of the Guodian Group, one of the five dominant power-sector state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that provide electricity from all generation sources. Also among the Big Five SOEs are the Huaneng Group, which owns wind developer Huaneng Renewables, and the Datang Corporation, which owns Datang, China’s fastest-growing big wind developer.

The country also plans to add 3.24 GW of nuclear power generation capacity this year, the National Development and Reform Commission said earlier this month.