Over half of China's wind power is wasted due to grid problems

By Simon Hall

Dow Jones Newswires

BEIJING -(Dow Jones)- More than half the electricity produced by China's wind farms goes unused because of a lack of power grid connections and insufficient transmission capacity, China Daily newspaper reported Saturday, citing the State Electricity Regulatory Commission.

China, which is the world leader in wind power generation, wasted 2.8 billion kilowatt-hours of wind-generated electricity in the first six months of 2010, according to a report from the Commission.

Its total installed wind power generating capacity was 41.83 gigawatts at the end of 2010, the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association has said.

China intends to substantially boost this amount, under plans to get 15% of its energy from non-fossil fuels by 2020, with wind power expected to contribute 2% and solar 1%.

Most of the country's wind farms have been built in windy but thinly populated northern and western China, such as the Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions and Gansu province, while most energy demand is along the heavily populated coastline, which is up to 4,000 kilometers away.

The problem has made wind-power operators such as China Wind Power Corp. switch to other regions in China that have a better electricity network though inferior wind power resources, China Daily said.

This year, the wind-power operator has put most of its new projects in Central and East China, such as in Hubei, Anhui, Hunan, and Jiangxi province.

"Large-scale wind-power generation is impossible in the short term due to inconsistency in the wind patterns," said Jiang Liping, vice-president of the State Grid Energy Research Institution, the paper reported.

"One solution could be to utilize a combination of power sources, including thermal and nuclear power, to increase the flexibility of power generation and regulating systems," Jiang said.

"To overcome this problem, China is developing a smart-grid system for the long term."

-By Simon Hall, Dow Jones Newswires, +86 10 8400-7755; simon.hall@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires
03-04-112110ET
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