Society

Wind turbine makers captivated by offshore potentials

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-06-20 14:27

In the view of Xie Changjun, general manager of Longyuan Power, China's largest wind farm operator, China's objective of developing five gw of offshore wind power by 2015 is proper.

Xie said the blowout-style development of China's onshore wind farm development is unfit for offshore wind power exploration, so China shouldn't develop offshore wind power by leaps and bounds.

Xie said he had not found out any offshore wind turbines in the country to satisfy him.

To seek turbines that meet his standards, Xie has set up a pilot inter-tidal wind farm in Rudong, Jiangsu province, to test 16 turbines from eight manufacturers.

Xie said the strategy would be to gradually tap offshore wind power, and large-scale offshore wind development might start in his company after 2015.

Steady progress

Ole Hermansen, director of the offshore wind power division of Siemens (China), said the biggest difference between China and Europe in wind power development is the construction speed. In Europe, an offshore wind farm is developed in five to six years, but it's a totally different story in China, Hermansen said. As he sees it, Europe develops too slowly, while China advances too fast. He prefers a middle course.

Despite the technological threshold in offshore turbine development, leading Chinese wind turbine makers remain eager to go into the business.

"Our policy is to pay close attention and advance steadily in offshore turbine production," said Sun Lixiang, deputy general manager of Guodian United Power.

Goldwind also said it would be cautious rather than advancing rashly in offshore turbine development.

Wu Gang, Goldwind's chairman, said high credibility of wind turbines depends on mature research and development and continual testing, and premature advance will only bring heavy losses, which wastes precious resources.

However, business insiders said it is unnecessary to take offshore wind power as something mystical under the premise of cautious progress.

Tao said the domestic turbine manufacturing sector is advancing healthily and steadily. "About six years ago, when we started to develop mw-level turbines, we were told China could not produce such machines."

He went on to say that although they lacked a supporting production chain, they persevered through joint efforts with component suppliers and developed high-quality mw-level turbines.