China Plans To Spend $5.8 Billion To Triple Wind Generating Capacity - Bloomberg

Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) -- China, the world's biggest energy consumer after the U.S., plans to invest 45.6 billion yuan ($5.8 billion) to more than triple wind-power generation capacity by 2010, an energy industry official said.

The government raised its target capacity to 8,000 megawatts by 2010 from 5,000, Li Junfeng, secretary-general of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association, said today. China added 80 percent in wind-power generation capacity last year to 2,300 megawatts from 1,300 megawatts, the National Development and Reform Commission said Jan. 5.

``The government's preferential policies and companies' willingness will enable us to exceed the original target,'' Li told reporters in Beijing.

EDIT

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=a1CNWrSm.V7o&refer=asia

Seriously. Way-cool.

The world has the materials and even some time left; China is doing it, so is Xcel Energy, I think this is absolutely terrific.

Just saying . .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=78340#78356

"Spinning reserve" is defined as the amount of electrical capacity that can be brought on line within a specified period, say like 30 minutes, owing to unanticipated demand. One has difficulty doing this with coal specifically because one must first boil water - presumably at ambient temperatures - with the coal, requiring the input of vast amounts heat - all of which will represent lost energy when the boiler is shut and allowed to cool.

Many nations have problems with spinning reserve and wind and it would be interesting to know about the Chinese approach. One strategy would be to shut off their water turbines at dams when the wind is blowing. Although wind plants are almost always a good thing, there are some ways that wind capacity can be next to useless in addressing climate change.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/30/235056/882

The price tag is interesting, as well. Wind facilities are lucky if they provide 30%-40% capacity utilization; a substantial fraction do not. Thus 8,000 mega"watts" is the equivalent of three large coal plants. That's quite a bit of money.

Of course the Chinese would do well to dump their soon to be useless dollar reserves for material investment like wind farms. Hopefully they will be inspired to buy American Wind turbines, if there is a such a thing.

Okay I'm not an electrical engineer or a physicist so someone will probably tell me where I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like this should be an insurmountable problem. If I read that article correctly, the problem is that the power produced by wind is intermittent and uneven both in the short term and the long term. So the problem is smoothing out the short term moment to moment fluctuations, and having a backup to use during longer periods of insufficient wind.

This seems at least conceptually easy to fix. Rather than having the windmills directly feed electricity to the grid by directly turning generators, have them charge batteries, or spin flywheels, or pump water into towers (or elevated ponds) and then use gravity to pull that water over turbines. All of these could smooth out the moment to moment supply as well as store surplus energy to be used when needed.

I know that doing any of those is, at least theoretically, less efficient than direct generation. But this may only be true if you don't take into account the issues raised in that article. In the real world, they may actually be more efficient.

I'm not fully up on their current situation, but my mental image is that, outside of developed cities, they aren't all that advanced. I'd guess they have many areas where it's not an issue of avoiding brown/blackouts, but rejoicing there is any power at all? Different in cities, of course.

I hear much of super-capacitors. Could they use banks of those for faster reactions to demand surges?