Progress also means failure and challenges also mean new solutions. This about resumes China’s struggles with its developing wind industry, although efforts to make it efficient are currently under way.
For example, last year China installed 7 GW of wind power capacity through its largest wind developer Longyuan Power Group. But out of this 7, 10% of it is still not working, grid barriers preventing it to connect to the network. This doesn’t seem to make the company as much as flinch, because its profits rose from 900 million Yuan ($137 million) to 2 billion Yuan ($305 million). Pretty impressive, isn’t it?
Another big challenge that requires a solution rapidly is China’s natural predisposition towards earthquakes. Even though Japan’s recent situation with an earthquake and a tsunami was extreme, its wind industry still managed to get out of it intact. Thanks to its anti-quake design, the equipment was unharmed; but if an earthquake were to hit China now, we couldn’t say the same thing. So this is another point on which manufacturers have to work on.
All in all, China is the uncontested leader of the wind industry: by the end of this year, it will own 58 GW of capacity, which is likely to triple over the next 10 years. Its long term goal is to draw 15% of its power needs from renewable sources, so investing millions into this wind industry certainly makes sense. One has to give it to them: i’s not every day that an economic world power turns into a “clean” world power!
[via CleanTechnica]
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