A fifth of China's wind output wasted on curtailment - report

Nearly a fifth of China’s installed wind power output is wasted due to the deepening curtailment issue, as state grid operators postpone turbine grid-connection amid high prices and weak power demand, Reuters said Monday.

An almost 100% year-on-year jump in wind curtailment to 10.7 TWh was observed in the first quarter of 2015 alone, the news agency said, citing official data.

Just recently, statistics released by the National Energy Administration (NEA) showed the “spilled wind” rate has increased by 6.6 percentage points to 18.6%. The problem is especially strong in remote areas, such as in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region as well as Jilin and Liaoning provinces. They were excluded from NEA’s list of 34 GW of wind projects to be either approved or cancelled by the central government this year because of the expanding curtailment issue there.

Last week, NEA unveiled that the country’s large-scale wind power capacity has reached a total of 101,100 MW as of the end of April 2015, which is 24% more than a year back. China plans to double its wind capacity to 200 GW as part of its 2016-2020 plan on energy, despite the current problems in the sector.

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