Increases in China’s wind energy production from the recovery of wind speed since 2012

China has realized a 56-fold increase in installed wind capacity, from 5.9 GW in 2007 to 328 GW in 2021. In addition to increasing installed capacity, plans to substantially increase wind energy production for climate change mitigation also depend on future wind speeds, which strongly influences the...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Liu, Yi, Zeng, Zhenzhong, Xu, Rongrong, Ziegler, Alan D., Jerez, Sonia, Chen, Deliang, Azorín-Molina, César, Zhou, Lihong, Yang, Xinrong, Xu, Haiwei, Li, Laurent, Dong, Li, Zhou, Feng, Cao, Renjing, Liu, Junguo, Ye, Bin, Kuang, Xingxing, Yang, Xin
Tipo de documento: artigo
Estado:Versão publicada
Data de publicação:2022
País:España
Recursos:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositório:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/303506
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/303506
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:Wind speed recovery
Capacity factor
Wind power gain
Wind turbine selection
Multiple scenarios
Descrição
Resumo:China has realized a 56-fold increase in installed wind capacity, from 5.9 GW in 2007 to 328 GW in 2021. In addition to increasing installed capacity, plans to substantially increase wind energy production for climate change mitigation also depend on future wind speeds, which strongly influences the efficiencies of installed turbines within individual wind farms. A reversal in globally decreasing wind speeds over several decades has been reported previously. However, subsequent studies using other data sources reported only a slight increase or no reversal in China. These uncertainties regarding China's wind energy production hamper estimates of wind energy production potential. Here, our analysis of quality-controlled wind speed measurements from in-situ stations shows that the wind speed decline in China reversed significantly since 2012 (P < 0.001), but with substantial spatio-temporal variability. We further estimated the capacity factor (CF) growth and the wind power gain solely associated with the changes in wind speed ranges from 31.6 to 56.5 TWh yr−1 based on the 2019 installed capacity. This estimate explains 22.0%–39.3% of the rapid increase in wind generation CF in China during 2012–2019. The result implies that the site selection of wind farms should consider both current wind situation and future wind speed trends. Further studies are needed to understand the driving factor of wind speed recovery in support of the wind energy industry.