CCID Consulting analyst Qiu Shiming believes that the cost of wind power generation will drop greatly. In the past 20 years or so, continuous breakthroughs in wind power generation technology have been made and the economies of scale have become more apparent. Statistics show that between 1980 and 2005, the cost of wind power generation has dropped by over 90%, faster than that of the other forms of renewable energy.
As technologies improve, wind power generating units will be cheaper and more efficient. Firstly, increased generating capacity per unit has reduced infrastructure inputs and expenses. Secondly, as financing costs fall and developers become more experienced, project development cost has also dropped accordingly. Thirdly, improved reliability of wind power generating units has also lowered the average operation maintenance cost.
CCID Consulting thinks that China will raise the percentage of homemade generating equipment, because it can greatly lower the cost of wind power generation. When 70% of the wind power generating units are homemade, their cost can be lowered by 15%. When other conditions remain unchanged, this will lower the wind power generation cost to 0.375 Yuan/kWh. If all the wind power generating units are homemade, it may reduce costs by 30%. The State must therefore increase investment in research and development. Under the current conditions, it is suitable to invest 1.5-3% of China's investment in wind power generation field construction to support research on wind power generation technologies and domestic manufacturing of generation equipment.
CCID Consulting analyst Qiu Shiming thinks that offshore wind power generation is emerging in China and will become an important form of energy.
China has natural conditions favorable for developing wind power generation. Its offshore wind energy resources are far greater than land wind energy resources. Available wind energy resources at a storage height of 10m exceed 700 million kW, and are also very close to the power load centers. This has made near sea wind power generation technology a hotspot of research and applications in recent years.
Currently, Shanghai has started to undertake offshore wind power generation projects. By 2010, the total installed wind power generating capacity will reach 200-300MW. To fulfill this goal, China will build wind power generation fields along the two sides of the East China Sea Bridge, the first long-distance cross-sea bridge in the country. These generation fields will be the first of its kind in mainland China. As the offshore wind power generation field technology matures and becomes economically feasible, offshore wind power generation is bound to become an important source of sustainable energy.
The sea's wind speeds are big and stable; their use hours can easily top 3,000. For the same generating capacity, offshore wind power generation costs will be 60% more than land wind power generation costs, while electricity output will be up by over 50%. The commercialized operation of multiple MW- level wind power generating units in near sea wind fields has become a new trend of wind energy utilization both at home and abroad. For example, the largest offshore wind power generation field is the Nysted Wind Farm along the southern coast of Denmark. With a capacity of 165.6MW and consisting of 72 Bonus2.3MW offshore generating units, it started to generate electricity in December 2003. By 2010, Europe's installed offshore wind power generating capacity is expected to reach 10,000MW.
CCID Consulting thinks as generation technology matures, wind power generating units in China have been developing towards bigger capacities.
There are roughly two development models for wind power generating units. For land wind power generation, the direction is low wind speed generation technology, while the main machine model is large-scale 2-5 MW generating units. The key to this model is power transmission to grids. Offshore wind power generation is mainly used on rather shallow offshore areas, with the installation of large-scale 5MW-plus generators and the deployment of large- scale wind power generation fields. The main constraints of this model are the planning and construction cost of such generation fields. But, offshore wind power generation has notable advantages, namely occupying no land and fairly good offshore wind power resources.
In a word, with the development of wind power generation, the total number of land wind generators is close to saturation. Offshore wind power generation fields will become the key area for future development. Offshore power generation is a new development field in the international wind power generation industry. It is ''a direction among directions.''
