Note: this article is a preliminary translation.

With high utilization hours of wind resources, power generation, no occupation of land, suitable for the characteristics of large-scale development, offshore wind power is becoming the important direction of the wind. At the recent "national engineering research center for offshore wind power commission the fifth annual meeting and senior international offshore wind technology BBS", experts said, the main factors which restrict the development of the offshore wind including natural environment, technology, quality, policies, etc., and to exist within certain period of time for a long time. During the much starker choices-and graver consequences-in "how to" promote the development of offshore wind power to achieve sound and rapid, it will be the wind power industry faces a big test.

"Twelfth five-year" period, Chinas wind power industry as a whole to realize high speed development, the grid size of 129 million kilowatts. New power capacity increase year by year, the proportion of wind power in the energy structure is increasing year by year. At the same time, a late start of offshore wind but slow to develop.

According to Chinas wind power development "twelfth five-year" plan, by 2015, the operation of wind power installed capacity will reach 100 million kilowatts, annual output of 190 billion KWH. Among them, the sea wind power installed capacity of 5 million kilowatts. However, the actual data show that at the end of last year, offshore wind power installed 1 million kilowatts, far from complete planning objectives.

Primary factors hindering the development of the offshore wind is high construction and operational costs. Economic daily reporter in an interview in fujian putian south German island offshore wind project found that compared with onshore wind, offshore wind development environment is more complex, the construction is difficult.

"The construction of offshore wind power costs usually is 2 times more than on land." A contract to build the project longyuan fujian company controller tells a reporter, offshore wind fan cost ratio as low as one third of total cost, infrastructure and power grid construction costs are significantly higher than that of onshore wind. Also a ton of cement to the island, for example, a few yuan more expensive; If a submarine cable is damaged, not only to loss of 100 million yuan, and from the failure to deal with for one month.

One industry source said, though the offshore wind electricity price adjustment again, but still lower than expected, less attractive. In addition to the price problem, on the use right of sea, the sea wind power development in coordination the management difficulty is very big also. Development offshore wind, after all, not immediately bring benefits, also may affect the ecological, the difficulty in management.

According to the preliminary planning, Chinas offshore wind to installed scale will reach 10 million kw in 2020. In the case of the current problems havent been solved effectively, to achieve leapfrog development and it is not easy to accomplish this goal.

As the start of the implementation of "much starker choices-and graver consequences-in", 2016 is likely to be "turning point" in the development of offshore wind. Yang Benxin, director of the national engineering research center for offshore wind power, said after inoculation and growth of the "twelfth five-year" period, the sea wind power currently has the scale development condition and the foundation. Many power developers, equipment manufacturing and engineering services, and other enterprises want to participate in offshore wind power development. Offshore wind power in China is in a "demonstration project" to the "rapid development" turning period.

Secretary general of the China renewable energy institute wind energy professional committee Qin Haiyan think, first of all to breakthrough the bottleneck cost. "Technology advanced, again good again, if you cant cut down the cost of wind power also WuXiaoYi, all of our goal to revolve around how to cut down the cost of the key." Qin Haiyan said that the driving force of wind power authors have three aspects: first, technological innovation is fundamental, due to the cost of offshore wind fan of small, can speed up the more large capacity unit, large diameter fan horse; Second, we need to improve the industry system, including the price policy, the size of the market, a steady growth of offshore wind market, is the key to the industry can continue. Third, to strengthen industry upstream and downstream cooperation, establish construction standards.