China resumes drive for supersize offshore wind turbines
Six year after an initial push that ran out of steam and with western companies moving into double-digit capacities, China's wind OEMs are again making moves towards 10MW+ offshore turbines
China’s wind power sector is newly seeking to spur development of 10MW-scale offshore turbines, six years after an initial push stalled before getting first machines into the water.
A string of recent announcements by Chinese OEMs, developers and research groups shows supersized machines are back on the agenda, prompted by Beijing’s 13th Five-Year Energy Technology Plan which sets 8-10MW turbine development as a key target by 2020.
The Chongqing-based turbine maker is no exception and announced in late 2017 that “it has already kicked off its indigenous research for 10MW turbine design.”
The source said the company is studying 8MW and 10MW turbines simultaneously. “If things go smoothly, we could skip the step of 8MW,” he said, while cautioning that the end product is still some way off.
CSIC joins a roster of other Chinese players to announce 10MW-level initiatives.
XEMC Windpower (XEMC) and Shanghai Electric, the two local OEMs with ties to European turbine technology, have separately announced they will begin constructing offshore wind turbine manufacturing facilities – at Zhoushan, Zhejiang and Shantou, Guangdong, respectively – initially focusing on 4-6MW designs, but with a future potential to produce 10MW machines.
XEMC said the Netherlands-based R&D centre of its Darwind subsidiary has been tasked with designing new 7-10MW products.
Earlier last year, Shanghai Electric teamed up with Zhejiang University to establish a wind R&D centre that takes “10MW turbine design” as a key mission.
At the end of January, State Power Investment Corp (SPIC) and Shenyang Technology University (STU) inked an agreement to join forces for wind turbine research, with a view to eventually developing a 10MW turbine prototype.
The deal marks a shift by SPIC – a developer rather than an OEM, and historically positioned in nuclear power – into wind technology R&D. It has shown a growing appetite for the offshore wind market shares, operates one project – the 100MW Binhai North H1 – and has about 1.4GW in its pipeline.
STU owns Huaren Wind Power Technology Co, which already established a line of turbine designs ranging from 1MW to 7MW.
So far, Chinese developers have mainly deployed turbines of 4-5MW, and Goldwind’s 6.7MW model is the most powerful turbine launched for China’s seas to date.
The move up in scale is the source of some debate in China itself, where some in the industry have questioned whether offshore wind speeds justify the investment in larger turbines, and warn of the relative lack of experience of Chinese manufacturers in the sector.