AFD has financed the first wind unit in Southwest China. During the dry season, it tops up supply from the region’s hydropower sources and also provides a response to increasing electricity demand in the city of Dali.
Context
China has made the strategic choice of pursuing, along with hydropower, a massive expansion of wind energy in order to meet growing national demand for energy, while increasing the share of clean energy in its energy mix. At the end of 2008, total installed wind capacity stood at 12 GW. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) then adopted an ambitious program to develop the wind sector, with an installed capacity target of 100 or 150 GW by 2020.
At the time, most wind farms were located in the provinces of Inner Mongolia and Hebei, in the north of the country. Yet the mountainous region of Yunnan offers favorable climatological conditions, with strong air currents, which are conducive to the installation of wind farms.
Description
The Dali Zhemoshan project supported by AFD created the following infrastructure:
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a wind farm with a capacity of 30.75 MW; forty-one 750 kW wind turbines, located on a mountain ridge at an altitude of 3,000 meters, 17 km from Dali;
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a 110 kV transformer substation.
The energy generated is connected to the city of Dali’s local electricity network.
Impacts
The creation of this wind farm has reduced the use of polluting energy sources. Compared with a coal-fired power plant, the implementation of this project lowers annual coal consumption by 24,000 tons, thus avoiding the release of 50,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and the emission of large quantities of pollutants: SO2 (390 tons) and NOx (220 tons).
This pilot project is the highest wind park in the world and the first to be installed in Yunnan, making it a reference for the development of future projects in this field.
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on the same region
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on the same topic
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on the same financial tool
