Study of China´s 1st large offshore wind project

China has an ambitious plan to develop a large number of offshore wind farm projects along the coastal line in the eastern and southern provinces. These provinces, active in economy, are having strong demands in electricity consumption. The offshore wind farms, built near these provinces to exploit rich wind resources, can provide a good energy source to alleviate pressure on supply side and reduce dependency on the electricity transmitted from Western and Northern parts of the country. Shanghai Donghai Bridge Offshore Wind Farm (DBOWF) is the China´s 1st large-scale offshore wind farm, also the first large offshore wind farm outside Europe. The offshore wind farm, commissioned on August 2010 with a total capacity of 102 MW, is consisted of 34 offshore wind turbines made by Sinovel. The wind farm has been up and operating for over 2 years. It is shown that the power generation and Capacity Factor are 226GWh and 25.3% in 2011, jumping to 246GWh and 27.5% in 2012, respectively. This paper reviews the project features and makes a good comparison to EU wind projects. We conclude that Shanghai DBOWF has been operating at the level lower than expectation, its performance needs to improve.