China has made substantial progress in boosting its burgeoning offshore small wind turbines by launching its largest intertidal wind farm at the end of 2011.

On December 28, Longyuan Power, China’ s largest wind power turbines developer, connected 99.3 megawatts (MW) of wind turbines to the grid in a pilot intertidal wind farm in Rudong county in eastern province of Jiangsu.

Taking into account the existing 32MW turbines, which went into operation in September 2010, Longyuan has 131.3MW turbines integrated to the grid in the pilot wind farm in Rudong. This has made the Rudong intertidal project China’s largest offshore wind farm.

Intertidal wind farms are a unique form to tap offshore windmill generator. Intertidal areas cover vast sea regions that are submerged in rising tide and heaved out in ebb tide.

According to China’ s Wind Power Development Roadmap 2050, recently issued by the energy research institute of National Development and Reform Commission, until 2021, China will focus on onshore wind development.

Overall, China plans to have 1,000 gigawatts (GW) of installed wind capacity by 2050, making up 17 percent of the country’s electricity consumption. So far, wind power generation accounts for 1.5 percent of national power generation.

China’ s only offshore wind farm in commercial operation is the Shanghai East Sea Bridge Offshore Wind Farm, totaling 102 MW. It went into operation in June 2010, using 34 Sinovel 3MW wind turbines.

Longyuan started to construct the Rudong intertidal wind farm in June 2009. The first stage of the pilot project, set to be 150 MW in installation, involves an investment of 2.5 billion yuan (397 million U.S. dollars). It will be fully completed in March 2012, said Zhang Gang, general manager of Longyuan Jiangsu Offshore Wind Power.

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