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Vestas plans to exploit China's wind power boom

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-04-21 15:53

Vestas, the world's biggest wind power equipment producer, plans to produce 800 of its new V60-850 kilowatt units per year at its new factory in Inner Mongolia once it goes into full operation in a year's time, Lars Andersen, the company's China president, said on Tuesday.

Related readings:  Vestas increases China investment by $90m  China's wind-power boom to outpace nuclear by 2020  Wind power capacity likely to rise 64% this year  Xi'an to build giant wind power facility R&D center

China is massively expanding its wind power capacity, with more electricity expected to come from wind than nuclear power by 2020, and Vestas plans to exploit the boom.

"The whole product and the whole factory is specifically tailored for China's wind conditions, road conditions and grid conditions," Andersen told reporters at a briefing in Beijing.

The V60 has longer blades that turn at a lower wind speed, and is designed to operate in a broad range of weather conditions, he said.

Inner Mongolia in northern China is by far the country's leading region in terms of wind power. Its installed wind power capacity was 3 gigawatts in 2008 and is expected to reach 5 gigawatts by 2010, Xinhua news agency quoted Zhao Shuanglian, vice chairman of the region, as saying on Monday.

The region had 4,000 wind turbines, Xinhua said, meaning Vestas' production of the new 850 kW model would add 20 percent to the number of existing local turbines.

Andersen said China would remain one of the top two wind power markets, along with the United States, and he was encouraged that China expected wind power capacity to hit 100 gigawatts by 2020, up eightfold from 2008.

There was no reason why China could not raise total wind power capacity to around 20 percent of the total, the same as in Vestas' home base of Denmark, he said.