A very interesting fact was published today by GWEC regarding wind energy production in 2015:
- US produced 190 million MWh from 74.5 GW of wind power installations
- China produced 185.1 million MWh from 145.1 GW of wind power installations
- Germany produced 84.6 million MWh from 44.95 GW of wind power installations.
This implies that the effective capacity factor of Chinese wind farms is about half of US wind farms. This can be attributed to a) better transmission infrastructure in US while China faces shortage of transmission from wind producing areas to load centers, and b) higher productivity due to higher wind speed and focus on bottom line in the US.
Comments:
Additional information from WindPower Monthly--As of December 2015, in China 14.8 GW of wind was not connected to the grid. The article also mentions that China has 20% exposure to curtailment.