Construction on first of 12 wind projects in Hainan

Construction on the first of 12 projects with a combined capacity of 1234.5 MW is under way in Hainan, China's southernmost province. All the projects are to be online by the end of 2010. The first 49.5 MW under construction is the start phase of the CNY 1.3 billion ($186 million) 120 MW Huaneng Wenchang wind farm. Comprising 33 Sinovel 1.5 MW turbines, it is being developed by Huaneng Hainan Electric Power Company, a subsidiary of Huaneng Group, China's leading power producer. The plant will be the first wind farm in the island province. The company hopes to complete the first phase by the end of the year. It says the same machines are likely to be used for the second phase project, also 49.5 MW, planned to start building next year, while as yet which units will be chosen for the third and final stage is undecided. Huaneng currently has around 1350 MW of wind plant operating or under construction, spanning Guangdong, Jilin, Shandong, and Inner Mongolia as well as Hainan. The Hainan provincial government hopes to see a further four of the 12 projects it has approved start construction this year, although the developers behind them have yet to be announced. Huaneng says it is not involved in any of them. The projects are the Danzhou E'man, Dongfang Fancheng, Dongfang Gaopai, and Dongfang Sigeng wind farms. Their completion, slated for the middle of next year along with the first phase of Huaneng Wenchang, will take the province's wind capacity from zero to 250 MW.