Industry Development of wind power

China has researched horizontal shaft wind power generation sets. From the perspective of Chinese condition, the research focus on wind power generation should be on two part: one is the small-sized wind power generation sets with the capacity below 1kW and independent operation, another is the large-scale wind power generation sets with the capacity more than 100kW and grid-connected. From the 1970s, the small-sized wind power generation sets has seen the development stages including the science and technology tackling, research and exploitation, demonstration and experiment, commercial production and popularization. Now, it has been nationalized completely. Until the end of 1998, the production quantity of small-sized wind power generation sets has kept in an amount of 160,000, and the annual production capacity has more than 10,000 sets, ranking the first of the world. The backbone enterprises for small-sized wind power generator include the Shangdu pastoral mechanism factory, Inner Mongolia power mechanism factory and Benxi mechanism factory. Their products are all mainly 100W wind power generation sets, not only satisfying the domestic needs, but also exporting.

The research of large-scale wind power generation sets has started from the 1980s actually. Before this time, China has independently developed wind power generation sets with various capacities from 20 to 50kW. Hangzhou mechanism research institute researched the first set of 200kW wind power generation sets in China. But due to many reasons, all of these sets have not been realized its commercial production. During the eighth five-year period, large-scale wind power generation sets were listed into the science and technology-tackling project by the state planning committee and the former state science committee. On the one hand, local science and research units are to be organized to jointly tackle the major technologies on large-scaled wind power generation sets and to develop independently as a consequence. On the other hand, local enterprises are to be organized to introduce foreign large-scale wind power generation sets so as to master its manufacturing technologies after digested, and as a result to assemble or produce through coordination. Under great efforts for several years, the development on large-scale wind power generation sets has achieved enormous advance in China. Thanks to the organization by China wind energy technology development center, the 200kW wind power generation sets developed by Zhengjiang M&E institute has passed the national-grade authentication in 1997 and has put into production in small quantity. Moreover, the main parts and allocated equipment for foreign large-scale wind power generation sets assembled and jointly produced have been nationalized.