China’s offshore wind power has been developing so fast over recent years that its installed capacity has grown to be the world’s third largest, the Economic Daily reported on June 21.

Statistics indicate that by the end of 2017, China’s installed offshore wind power capacity had reached 2.79 million kilowatts.

China has a broad space and great potential for developing offshore wind power, said Zhou Maoping, president of China Association of Oceanic Engineering.

Zhou explained that different from onshore wind power, offshore wind power embraces a broad prospect for consumption as it is close to China’s power load center.

China has natural advantages in developing offshore wind power, as the country boasts 18,000 kilometers of coastline, an exploitable sea area of over 3 million square kilometers and rich wind energy resources.

No matter the technological or policy levels, China possesses conditions for scale development of offshore wind power after years of stable development. For example, Chinese enterprises including Goldwind Science & Technology Co. Ltd, Shanghai Electric Group and Dongfang Electric Corporation are now able to produce high-capacity machine units of 5 megawatts that can adapt to the complicated marine environment of China’s coastal areas.

Despite rapid development, there is still a gap between China’s offshore wind power industry and international advanced ones in areas such as oceanographic engineering, product reliability and maintenance.

Construction cost will also be a factor that decides the future offshore wind power market in China.

Zhai Endi, chief engineer at Goldwind, suggests machine units with higher capacity should be used in China, as the cost in construction, operation and maintenance will be much lower than those with lower capacity.

According to the 13th National Five Year Plan for Wind Power Development, the Chinese government plans to increase its total installed capacity for wind power to 5 million kilowatts by 2020.