China’s Offshore Wind Setback Restricts Sales for National Turbine Manufacturers

Chinese wind power sector is facing its first year of stagnation since the government has failed to start with offshore wind farm projects, while the country is also reducing onshore construction to allow power grids to catch up with the rapidly growing wind energy.

Disagreements between authorities over site locations have stopped Chinese progress towards building 30GW of offshore capacity by 2020, as the onshore wind project approvals are hardly attainable due to transmission grid’s overload last year.

This setback may take its toll on national wind turbine manufacturers by limiting their sales, the Bloomberg writes.

The largest domestic turbine manufacturing companies, Sinovel and Goldwind, are chasing offshore wind projects in order to get credibility for competition with the major European suppliers in the global offshore market. They may seek shifting of the old idled capacity and develop larger offshore turbines.

[mappress]

Offshore WIND staff, June 26, 2012; Image: Sinovel