Techno-economic Study On Chinese Wind Farms In Four Tariff Areas

Promoted by policy, the Chinese cumulative capacity of wind turbines increased from 1265.9MW to 42287MW during "The 11th Five" periods, and the average annual growth ratio exceeds 100%. The Chinese new installed and cumulative capacity of wind turbines leaped to the first place in the world, in which the new installed capacity accounted for 46.1% of the world in 2010. With the boom of wind farms, the main problem for the project investors is how to realize profit by identifying the high-quality invest chance. The wind tariff area was classified as four categories after Aug 1st,2009, identifying the expected return becomes more definite for investors.The main content of the paper is:(1) Main factors that affect profit are presented, including operational hour, investment, price of wind turbine and long-term lending rate. (2) The influenced degree was found by the analysis of the data of 120 wind farms. (3) A computational model on techno-economic indicators was created and achieved in software, by which the relation between IRR and indicators was quantitatively evaluated and the profitable boundary conditions were easily analyzed.It is concluded that the expected profit can be achieved only if the operational hours reached a certain level. The least value of operational hours of the first, second, third and fourth tariff area is 2200,2100,1900,1800 hours. In the first and the second tariff areas, in which the wind resource is relatively better, the profit can be achieved by controlling investment. In the third and the fourth tariff areas, the profit is not sensitive on investment, so the profit can be achieved by increasing electricity output.