Reference no: EM132977451

Short case: Wind Energy; where's the constraint?

According to the China Wind Energy Association, the power output generated by the farms was not meeting expectations. Over 20% of the power created was not reaching the national grid. The reason for this under performance of the system was that new wind farms and turbines set up and working but were not attached to the grid for around the first three to four months. The utilisation rate of mainland wind farms in China, much lower than comparable projects operating in the UK or USA While differences in wind resources could partly explain the disparity, insufficient investment in grid connections played a key part. The problem appears to be that the regions where wind resources are most abundant tend to have the weakest grid. In addition, some wind farms are generating more power than initial estimates and their output has been rejected by the local grid companies because of concerns it would overload their systems. Wind farms are generally of smaller generation capacity than coal-fired power plants and are less stable in output since they are subject to variable wind speed. As a result, the return on investment from wind power is lower for grid operators.

Questions:

1. What resources are needed to reduce or remove the current bottleneck?