Interfax-China reported that East China’s Shandong Province saw installed wind power capacity in August top 3.4 GW an increase of 51.36% YoY.

Local grid operator Shandong Electric Power Corporation said that the majority of wind power produced in the province was absorbed by the local power grid, Shandong Electric Power said without elaborating.

Mr Zheng Jianjing power industry consultant said that as the third biggest region in China by GDP and with a large industrial base Shandong has a strong economic incentive to maximize consumption of local wind power. The province currently needs to import power to meet demand.

According to Shandong Electric Power, Shandong consumed 364 terawatt hours of power in 2011 but only produced 318 TWH. The province has proven exploitable wind power resources of 26.55 GW and plans to increase installed capacity to eight GW by 2015 to reduce dependence on electricity imports, the gird operator said. Wind power as a share of the province’s total installed power capacity rose from 0.03% in 2011 to 6.22% by the end of August.

Shandong’s apparent success at connecting wind farms to the power gird stands in stark contrast to other major wind power producing regions including Gansu and Hebei provinces and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region which waste large quantities wind power because of poor grid connections. Those regions are relatively underdeveloped and produce surplus electricity.

Source - Interfax-China

(www.steelguru.com)