Exploitation and utilization of the wind power and its perspective in China

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Abstract

Wind energy, as a reliable, natural and renewable electrical power supply, produces no emissions and so it is an excellent alternative to conventional, more heavily polluting fuels in the long term based on the worldwide concern about the environment and energy supply. Wind energy resources in China are affluent, but its distribution are uneven, centralized, and far from both the utility and the high electricity demand markets. This made China's onshore wind power development have such characteristics as large scale, high centralization and far transmission, which is different with that in Europe, where the characteristics are even distribution, decentralized. In past two decades, considering the economic, technical and environmental benefits of wind power, China has given priority to its development. Besides the dramatic growth of large scale grid-connected wind power, household-scale wind power has been used most successfully in remote rural regions in China. Therefore, the development of wind power will be of great importance to alleviate the energy crisis and environmental pollution resulting from the rapid economic growth of China in the future. In this paper, the current development of wind energy utilization in China is investigated, and some critical barriers are discussed. Finally, the perspective of wind energy utilization is presented, where focuses are placed on seven wind power bases.

Introduction

Energy resources are the supporting industry of a nation's economy and society development. With the fast increasing of China's economy over the last three decades, China is also becoming an energy consumption big power, and its total primary energy consumption had been up to 3249.39 million tons of standard coal as calorific value calculation in 2010. However, it is worth noting that the consumption of coal and petroleum, and nature gas constituted 68%, 19% and 4.4% of the total annual primary energy consumption, respectively [1]. It is difficult to change this situation any time soon. As a result, China is facing many challenges from the extensive use of fossil energy resources. For example, it is worldwide recognized that fossil energy resources will not last very much longer, and their exploitation and utilization seriously pollutes the environment and discharges a large quantity of greenhouse gases. So it is seriously threatening the capacity for China's sustainable development.

In practice, most of the present energy demand is used in generating electricity. By 2010, the total installed capacity of electric power had reached 966 GW, which represents a 10.56% growth rate in this year in comparison with the year of 2009. However, In spite of the fast increasing of electricity generation, the electricity supply cannot yet meet the demand well, which had contributed to cuts in power supply in many areas, especially in peak-value time, as the total electricity demand in China in 2010 was 4199.9 TWh [2], and is projected to reach 5990–6570 TWh in 2015 [3]. As a result, coal use is expected to increase greatly in order to electrical power needs in the next couple of decades. This will result in a significant contribution to world CO2 emissions. As a matter of fact, Chinese emissions were more than six billion tons of CO2 in the year 2009, accounting for about 22% of global emissions [4].

In order to deal with energy crisis and global climate warming, as all other countries around the world, efforts have been made to generate electricity from renewable electrical energy in China. One way of generating electricity from renewable energy resources is to use wind turbines, which can convert the kinetic energy contained in the wind into electrical power by using modern wind energy conversion technologies. Due to their advantages, together with institutional and governmental support on wind energy and improvement of modern wind energy conversion technology, by the end of 2009, China's market for the electrical power produced by the wind turbine generator (WTG) has been up to 27.615 TWh, demonstrating a 111.14% year-on-year increase [5], and in the year 2010, with a 78.89% increase in comparison with the year of 2009 [2]. Compared with fossil fuels, wind turbine generators (WTG) have a number of advantageous characteristics that are presented as following [6], [7]:

  • Wind energy is essentially a natural, infinite and renewable electrical power supply, that is, it will never be depleted during the generation of the electricity, which can be realized through modern wind turbines technologies.

  • The generation of the electricity from wind energy is environmentally friendly. It does not emit CO2 and create any toxic by-products.

  • As a matter of fact, all forms of energy production have an effect on the environment, but the impacts of wind energy are low, local, and manageable. These environmental impacts are negligible when compared with conventional fossil energy sources.

  • Wind energy can do more than the production of the electricity such as water pumping, grinding grain, sawing wood and power tools.

At present, there are different alternatives for wind power generation utilization such as so-called “on-grid” and “off-grid”. On-grid wind power means that wind power generation system is connected to the power grid, and the electricity that is produced by wind turbines is transmitted to power consumer through the grid, while its counterpart, off-grid means that wind power generation systems are isolated, and without connection to the grid. In general, energy storage components are need to ensure the electricity supply during the periods of low or no power output, this can be because that wind power outputs can fluctuate on an hourly or daily basis. Alternatively, the wind can also be used in a hybrid concept with diesel engine generator, with fuel cells or photovoltaic power system.

The main objective of this paper is to give a quick overview of the distribution of wind energy resources, and to investigate the current development of wind energy utilization in China. In turn, some critical barriers are discussed. Finally, the perspective of wind energy utilization is presented, where focuses are placed on seven wind power bases.

Section snippets

Onshore wind resources in China

China is endowed with large wind energy resources, especially in the north and the southeast along the coastline. As the third general survey of national wind resource of China meteorological Administration, the theoretical exploitable storage of wind energy in China has been estimated at 4350 GW, and the technological available storage is in the order of 297 GW at a 10 m height [8]. In fact, modern turbine hub height has been up to 50 m, at which the technological available storage could be two

Overall status

Wind power is the fastest-growing energy resource both in China and worldwide in the recent years, which can be seen in Fig. 2 [2], [5], [13], [14], which presents the annual growth rate of electrical power installed capacity by primary energy resource. From the figure, between the years 2006 and 2010, the growth rate of wind power installed capacity was a great deal higher than any other electricity generating technology in China. Fig. 3 shows the share of wind power in the total installed

Challenges in utilizing wind energy in China

China is a huge emerging market for wind energy which can be harnessed to provide enormous electrical power to both the remote rural areas which cannot access to a reliable electric network and these regions that are lack of conventional fossil fuel energy resources. Moreover, exploitation of wind energy will substantially benefit the coastal areas.

So far, although some efforts in China have been made, more research and development (R&D) on technology and policies related to wind energy is

Future prospect

In order to satisfy the rapidly growing energy demand, deal with the global challenges of climate change, and ensure the safety of energy supply, the National Medium and Long-Term Development Plan of Wind Power is issued by the National Development and Reform Commission of China in 2003, which puts forth the goal of the total installed capacity of wind power will reach 4 GW by the end of 2010, 10 GW up to 2015, respectively, and at the same time, offshore wind power projects on the southeast

Conclusion

The current intent to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and conserve fossil fuels has resulted in a drive to clean and renewable energy, especially the large majority of aerodynamic energy contained in wind has gained more attentions recently and as a consequent wind power has developed considerably. It is well known that wind energy is a reliable, natural and renewable electrical power supply. Utilization of wind power can increase considerably the clean power supply, and reduce the emission of

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