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Apr. 25 (NBD) -- South China's Guangdong province plans starts building offshore wind power projects with a total capacity of more than 12 gigawatts (GW) by the end of 2020, with an aim to increase the capacity to 30GW by the end of 2030, according to the province's offshore wind power development plan 2017-2030. 

This marks a substantial leap from the targets listed in the province's 13th five-year plan for energy development (2016-2020) issued in January 2017. 

Guangdong has its unique advantages in developing offshore wind power, a wind power engineer told NBD. 

The new development plan shows that the southern province has wind energy potential of 100GW in offshore areas. More importantly, the wind power resources are of great quality. 

According to the plan, Guangdong intends to build 23 offshore wind farms with a total installed capacity of 66.85 GW. Of them, 15 will be in the shallow area with a water depth of less than 35 meters, while 8 will be in the deep area with a water depth of 35-50 meters.

Besides ample resources, the need for a transformation in energy structure is a strong driver of Guangdong's push into the clean energy development. At present, the province still depends largely on fossil energy like coal and petroleum, facing enormous energy and environmental pressure. 

However, the offshore wind power development is facing a series of challenges. 

NBD learned that compared with the traditional fossil fuel power projects, offshore wind power projects cost higher in power generation, with the investment per 1KW of capacity standing at 20,000 yuan (3,171.3 U.S. dollars). This leads to weaker-than-expected investment returns in some sea areas with less wind power resources. 

Moreover, offshore wind farms have demanding requirements in terms of equipment and construction technique, so as to cope with extreme weather like typhoon and technical challenges such as salt spray and corrosion prevention, the above-mentioned engineer said to NBD. 

Email: lansuying@nbd.com.cn