Wind Energy China: One Gigawatt Wind Power Plant Largest in China

The China Education and Research Network reports a 1,000 megawatt (one gigawatt) wind power plant, currently the largest in China, has been initiated in Anxi County of northwest China's Gansu Province.

With an investment of USD $967 million (RMB eight billion yuan), the project will play an important role in the development of new and clean energy resources and easing the power shortages in the eastern and western areas.

Alternate Energy China: Renewable Energy Law sets 10% Target

BBC News reports that China's government has passed a renewable energy law which is intended to increase production of energy from sustainable sources.

The law, which will come into force early next year, seeks to increase the usage of solar and wind power to 10% of China's total consumption by 2010. This would equate to around 60 gigawatts.

However, while the new law has been welcomed, it has been suggested that the targets are over ambitious.

Rising oil prices and concerns over environmental damage prompted the move.

At present China relies on coal for most of its power, mining 1.8bn tons in 2004.

By fixing prices for electricity from solar and wind generated power, the government hopes to create financial incentives for existing operators and attract investment to these new markets.

But while there has been rapid expansion in the sustainable energy sector, it currently provides only a fraction of China's needs.

Currently wind power in China only contributes 0.01% to the power grid. To increase that to 10% in five years is ambitious, but in my opinion it's a target well worth aiming for. If China takes the same relentless attitude to pushing down the costs of wind turbine manufacture as it does with consumer goods the benefits may be realised around the world.

Full BBC News Article

Site Agreed for Australian Solar Tower, Plans for Solar Tower in China

The firm behind the plan to build a power-generating solar tower (also described as a solar chimney) - touted as the world's tallest structure - in Outback New South Wales is to sign an agreement to buy the site.

Melbourne-based Enviromission will buy a 10,000ha slice of Tapio station at Buronga, 25km northeast of Mildura, to build the 1km tower.



Enviromission chairman Roger Davey confirm the purchase price was in excess of a million dollars (USD). The agreement will be signed in Mildura, about 350 miles northwest of Melbourne, before an audience of community leaders.

"It confirms our commitment to the site and the Sunraysia region for the first solar tower."

The mammoth project, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, will be built by the end of 2009.

The reinforced concrete tower will cover approximately one square kilometres at its base and will be surrounded by a "greenhouse" of glass, polycarbonate and polymer. Air at 30C at the edge of the glasshouse is heated up to 70C at the centre, where the tower draws it through 32 turbines to the cooler air above.

The power station will produce up to 200 megawatts of electricity and can generate 24 hours a day.

EnviroMission and SBP estimate the cost of their first 200-megawatt solar thermal tower at $670m, and say the cost of subsequent towers would fall. An engineering infrastructure, materials manufacturing plants and trained workforce would be in place and the design and construction would have been refined.

The initial cost is comparable with the $600m cost of building a new 200MW brown-coal power station and a drying plant for the coal, which is nearly 70% water by weight. A 200MW black-coal power station in Queensland would cost $440m. These prices ignore the unknown environmental and health costs of greenhouse gas, sulphur and particulate emissions from coal-fired power stations.

Each solar tower would abate between 920,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually from fossil fuels. Solar towers would help lessen Victoria's heavy dependence on brown coal-sourced electricity.

Enviromission floated on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2001. Its major investor is the owner of the solar tower technology, US company SolarMission Technologies.

Enviromission has the exclusive Australian rights to the technology, first developed on a much smaller scale in Spain in the early 1980s, using a German design.

There are also plans to invest a further US$8 million for development of a solar tower in China.

Enviromission will be a part owner of a global intellectual property company that will benefit from solar towers built around the world, Davey said.

The pre-feasibility study was completed successfully in February last year.

actual photographs (as far as I can tell) of the demonstration project in Manzares, Spain:

Solar Tower Spain

Inside the Spanish Solar Tower

Solar Tower Turbine in operation

more info:

February 2005 Wired Article on Australian Solar Tower

Solar Chimney in California?

Enviromission Website

Solar Mission Website

Alternative Energy China: Asia's Largest Wind Farm

A private company plans to build Asia's biggest wind farm in the sea south of Shanghai, setting up 100 turbines in shallow coastal waters, an industry group said Thursday.

The announcement of the 2 billion yuan (US$250 million) project comes as China struggles with severe electricity shortages while also trying to reduce its heavy reliance on dirty coal-fired power plants.

Zhejiang Green Power Investment Co. is to build the project along the coast of Daishan County in Zhejiang, the province south of Shanghai, the China Electricity Council said. It didn't say when construction was to begin.

The wind farm is to have a generating capacity of 200 megawatts, according to the council, the main trade group for China's power industry.

At the end of 2004, China's total wind power capacity was a mere 730 megawatts.