China reaches 134 GW total wind in Q1, idled wind rates climb

China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) said Tuesday the country's cumulative wind power capacity has reached 134 GW at end-March 2016, after some 5.33 GW were installed in the first quarter.

The country now operates about 33% more wind parks than it did a year ago. Still, the wind power curtailment issue continued to worsen and the nominal capacity of idled wind turbines countrywide has jumped by 7 percentage points to an average of 26%.

First-quarter wind deployment was most active in five regions:

China fed 55.2 TWh of wind power to the grid in the three months under review, up 21% year-on-year. About 19.2 TWh of that was wasted, which is by 8.5 TWh more than a year ago.

The northeastern province of Jilin ranked first in terms of unused wind capacity, leaving roughly 53% of all turbines idled in January-March. The Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and Gansu province follow with "spilled wind" rates of 49% and 48%, respectively.

The global leader in installed wind capacity plans to lift it to 200 GW as part of its 2016-2020 five-year plan on energy.

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