BEIJING, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- Indian wind turbine giant Suzlon Energy said it plans to increase its presence in China, anticipating that China will become the wind energy hot spot of the future, a company official said.
Tulsi Tanti, chairman of Suzlon, the largest wind turbine manufacturer in Asia, cited the market potential of the Chinese government's goal of increasing wind power capacity from about 20 gigawatts at year-end 2009 to 90 gigawatts by 2015, India's Daily News & Analysis newspaper reports.
"We are bringing the Chinese price with German technology. We are quite comfortable that we will get more business from the China market," Tanti told DNA Monday, noting that he wasn't concerned about competition from Chinese manufacturers.
Currently Suzlon is the eighth largest wind energy company in China with an installed capacity of 530 MW.
Related
In September, Suzlon announced it would open a research and development center in China to take advantage of the booming local market. So far, the company has a manufacturing unit in Tianjin and a marketing office in Beijing, employing about 800 people in the country.
While China accounts for about one-fifth -- 600 megawatts -- of Suzlon's total manufacturing capacity, the company's Chinese plant has been running only at 25 to 30 percent capacity.
Tanti said he expects the plant to be fully operational by next year, noting that by having a manufacturing base in China, Suzlon can compete price-wise with Chinese suppliers.
In India, Suzlon has installed 5 gigawatts of wind capacity, with about half of its 1.5 gigawatts in orders generating domestically. That figure is expected to rise to 3.6 gigawatts by 2011.
In 2009, China added a record-breaking 13.8 gigawatts of new wind power capacity, making it a world leader in terms of new installations for that year, says the Global Wind Energy Outlook report issued last month by the Global Wind Energy Council and Greenpeace. That compares with 10 gigawatts installed in Europe and 9.9 giawatts in the United States.
The report shows that for the past five years China each year has doubled its wind power capacity.
China's total power generating capacity grew by approximately 11 percent in 2008, while wind power more than doubled in that year. Yet despite that tremendous growth, wind power still only covers less than 1 percent of China's total electricity demand, the report shows.
