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Due to atmospheric pollution from fossil fuels, the reduction of wind turbine costs, and the rise of the low-carbon economy, wind energy conversion systems have become one of the most significant forms of new energy in China. Therefore, to reduce investment risk and maximize profits, it is necessary to assess wind resources before building large wind farms. This paper develops a comprehensive system containing four steps to evaluate the potential of wind resources at two sites in Xilin Gol League and at additional two sites in Alxa League of Inner Mongolia, China: (1) By calculating the total scores of three indexes, including the effective wind power density (EWPD), wind available time (WAT) and population density (PD), an indexes method is applied to assess the theoretical wind energy potential from 2001 to 2010. (2) To judge the fluctuations in the wind speed, the Fisher optimal partition method and the Jonckheere–Terpstra test are used to analyze the changes in the average monthly and yearly wind speeds from 2001 to 2010. (3) Three probability density functions, i.e., Weibull, Gamma and Lognormal, are used to assess the wind speed frequency distribution in 2010. To enhance the evaluation accuracy, three intelligent optimization parameter estimation algorithms, i.e., the particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO), differential evolution algorithm (DE) and ant colony algorithm (ACO), are used to estimate the parameters of these distributions. (4) It is helpful to analyze the wind characteristics when assessing wind resources and selecting wind turbines. Therefore, the optimal frequency distribution based on the best parameter estimation method can be chosen to calculate the wind power density, the most probable wind speed and the wind speed carrying the maximum energy. The experimental results show that Site 1 and Site 4 are more suitable for large wind farms than Site 2 or Site 3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines the current situation of wind industry development, evaluates the potentials of GHG mitigation and identifies the key determinants of scaling up wind power deployment in China. China has doubled its wind capacity every year for the past 4 years, the total installed capacity reached 12 Gigawatts (GW) and surpassed the 10-GW target 2 years ahead of schedule in the national plan for renewable energy development ,and would reach 100–120GW by 2020 according to the government’s new energy plan. It may become the biggest wind power generation and wind turbines manufacturing country of the world in the next years if the abundant wind resources and enormous domestic market can be harnessed with appropriate policies and efficient technology. The recent positive move in vigorous development of wind power in China implies that the total installed capacity will far exceed the targets of the government’s 2007 renewable energy plan. However, the prosperous Chinese wind market has also revealed some worrisome signals and weakness , such as low capacity factor and frequent outage of wind farms, inadequate grid infrastructure, long distance transmission, low quality of turbines, adverse price bidding, nepotism in wind farm developer selection process and regulatory uncertainty and policy inconsistency which all conspire to hinder effective power generation in the massively new installed wind capacities. A coherent policy framework is required for creating enabling environment for accelerating wind energy penetration and state-of-art technology deployment in the country. It is argued that institutional, financial and technical capacity will need to be cemented to exploit the huge potentials of wind resources to meet the rapidly growing demand for electricity in China in the coming decades with minimised environmental implications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]