Green energy powers grasslands

A farmer drives his tractor past wind turbines in Xilin Gol in Inner Mongolia in September. [Photo/China Daily]

Not long after Wu Liqin got her job with an electrical company in 1982, she was braving sandstorms and grassland hills on a horse cart.

Along with two colleagues, she was charged with fitting 100-watt, wind-powered generators in herders' homes across Xilin Gol league, a prefecture in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

"Sometimes, if we were too far away from the nearest town, we'd spend the night with a Mongolian family in a yurt (a traditional tent-like dwelling)," she said.

Despite long hours on the road, she can still recall the surprised faces of herders when they saw the turbines spin and power up their light bulbs.

These small wind turbines continue to spin outside many homes. In the Sonid Right Banner (the equivalent of a county), Liu Jinlian and her husband Zu Shoushan rely on one to power a 9-inch television set and a few light bulbs.

Liu, 53, complained the battery is so old that its storage capacity is limited. "Sometimes the power runs out before we go to bed," she said.

Hata, who lives a short car ride away, does not have that problem. He said his small solar generator provides more than enough for his family. "We can't use all the electricity it produces everyday," said the 55-year-old, who like many Mongolians goes by only one name.

The herders' use of renewable energy is only a tiny part of Xilin Gol's ambition to become a major national supplier of hybrid electricity and contribute to improving China's renewable energy mix.

The central government has pledged to raise the percentage of non-fossil fuels in the country's total energy use to 15 percent by 2020. It was less than 9 percent last year.

It also aims to cut carbon intensity per unit of gross domestic product by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels.

Wu's job today is to watch a bank of monitors in the control room of the Saihan Zhurihe Wind Farm, which is run by North Power. Outside the compound are dozens of wind turbines over an area of 7.9 hectares.

Property measures inspection launched

The wind farm, which generated 14 million kW of electricity this year, is one of 23 in operation in Xilin Gol. The largest, with hundreds of turbines already operated by several domestic power companies, is spread over what the Mongolians call Huitengliang, or Grey Cold Hill, which is 450 kilometers north of Beijing.

"When I was stranded on the Beijing-Zhangjiakou section of the Beijing-Tibet highway (the section is prone to traffic jams), I kept asking myself why we (the country) are wasting so much diesel transporting coal from Inner Mongolia to power plants as far away as Jiangsu and Zhejiang (provinces) in the south," said Yu Zhiyun, director of Xilin Gol's development and reform commission.

He said it makes better economic sense if the country takes Xilin Gol, as well as other places in Inner Mongolia with natural resources, as a starting point for a sophisticated system of hybrid power generation and relay.

"We believe Xilin Gol has every advantage to provide a cleaner and inexpensive mix of power for Beijing and North China," said Yu. "The mix of wind, solar and coal is too abundant here to be left untapped."

Through a new ultra-high voltage direct-alternating current transmission network, he added, electricity generated in Xilin Gol can reach Jiangsu and help make power generation greener in the Yangtze River valley, as most of the power plants in East China are coal-fired.

An example of the renewable energy mix of solar and wind power that is employed in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. [Photo / China Daily]

Wind-powered generators dot the vast grassland in Xilin Gol league, which is in the middle of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. [Photo / China Daily]

Power potential

Results of an extensive national survey by the China Meteorological Administration show wind resources are mainly concentrated in northwestern and northern parts of China.

Xilin Gol, one of the country's most northern points, endures six months of windy winters. Thanks to recurrent airstreams in spring and winter, winds as strong as 17 meters per second also sweep the area 60 to 80 days out of the year.

In a way, the relatively steady wind - an average of 3 to 11 m/s - is a blessing, making a large proportion of the prefecture a natural base for wind farms.

A series of studies conclude that the blustery conditions have the potential to generate at least 50 million kW of electricity, with more than 10 possible sites for large facilities with capacities of 1 million kW.

Xilin Gol has abundant land with open grassland and sandy soil, and is sparsely populated, with five people per square kilometer. It is hard not to be impressed with the spectacular sight of hundreds of wind turbines on its plains and meandering hills.

At the end of this year, about 31 wind farms with capacities to produce 2 million kW a year will have been completed, generating 5 billion kW, said Yu at the local development and reform commission.

And by 2020, the prefecture is expected to have 100, with a combined rolling capacity of 11.2 million kW, according to a tentative plan drafted by the commission.

However, Yu admitted the intermittent nature of wind means it is not a continuous and steady power resource.

In the control room at Shenhua Guohua (Xinlin Gol) Renewable Energy one recent rainy afternoon, the only figure on the computer monitors was zero. The wind speed was too mild to get its turbines at Huitengliang moving.

"We were able to send out between 30,000 to 40,000 kW of electricity this morning," explained general manager Wang Wenguo apologetically. He also started his career installing small turbines at herders' yurts.

The wind is relatively mild in summer, too; although Yu insisted it is also when the sunshine is the strongest, providing the best source for solar energy.

Sunshine in Xilin Gol ranges between 2,088 and 3,290 hours a year, with the solar radiation enough to generate the same heat as 29.8 billion tons of standard coal.

Preliminary work is being conducted and the prefecture hopes to be able to build five solar power stations with a combined capacity of 5 million kW on its deserts, according to the local plan that is awaiting approval from the Energy Bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission.

Other resources

Property measures inspection launched

Yet, Xilin Gol has the second largest coal reserve in Inner Mongolia - 144.8 billion tons - and has China's largest reserves of lignite, also known as brown coal.

Experts have found at least five mines with reserves of at least 10 billion tons of brown coal, which is the lowest rank of coal but also low in sulfur and phosphorous. In the developed countries, it is used almost exclusively as fuel for electric power generation.

Moreover, the coal is invariably deposited close to the surface, making it commercially viable to extract with open-pit mining. In fact, the national and regional development and reform commissions have already approved 12 mine projects in Xilin Gol, with production set to reach 100 million tons this year. Four of the pits are major projects under the 11th Five Year Plan (2006-2010).

Yu and his colleagues have also proposed that at least four major power plants are built beside or close to the mines to save on the amount of diesel used in transport, as well as other materials used in road construction, and thereby reducing the overall carbon footprint. "Sending electricity inland is more economical and leaves fewer carbon footprint than transporting coal down south," he said.

At the Shangdu power plant, where coal arrives by train from an open-pit mine 213 km away, many new technologies have helped to make it green. It is equipped with an advanced desulphurization process to reduce pollution and a dry cooling system imported from Germany to reduce water use by 80 percent.

With four 600,000-kW units already in operation, the plant accounts for roughly 78 percent of all electricity generated in Xilin Gol and sends the power directly to grids covering Beijing, Tianjin and the city of Tangshan in Hebei province.

"We're proud we help maintain the steady supply of electricity in our nation's capital," said Bian Guangping, the plant's deputy general. "We won a national award for our contribution to the Beijing Olympics in 2008."

In the control room at Shangdu power plant, which is equipped with an advanced desulphurization process to reduce pollution and a dry cooling system to reduce water use. [Photo / China Daily]

The cost to operate the power plant is actually much lower than similar facilities in the Yangtze River valley, which have to pay a lot of money for coal transportation. Bian said his plant also collects waste residue from burned coal.

The prefecture's development and reform commission plans to build additional factories to process waste residue from other power plants in the coming years, said director Yu.

Officials hope to extract rare minerals, such as germanium, an important semiconductor material with multiple uses ranging from transistors and various other electronic devices, fiber-optic systems and infrared optics to solar cell applications.

Research indicates the prefecture not only has a rich coal reserve but is also rich in 14 minerals, including iron, copper, chromium, lead, zinc, tin, tungsten, silver, germanium, bismuth, indium, gallium, cadmium and gold.

Ecological concern

To fulfill their ambition, officials in Xilin Gol must deal with the impact of energy development on the ecology and environment. It is a grave challenge for the drought-plagued area to build additional coal-fired power plants, even with better technologies that consume less water.

Open-pit mines are notorious for causing dust and soil erosion, so strict rules have been set for operators, said Bai Jinsheng, deputy head of the prefecture's major project office.

"We must make sure extraction of coal results in the least possible amount of dust," he said. "The companies that operate the mines must also promise to green the area piled with top soil from the mines."

Property measures inspection launched

However, Hata in Sonid said he thinks that several wind turbines erected on grassland his family owns are a bit close to home. "The noise from the turbines get louder when wind is stronger," he complained. "The sound is sometimes annoying."

He is especially frustrated when workers come to repair the wind turbines. He added: "They drive on my grassland instead of the beaten tracks."

Chao Ke, an official with Sunid Right banner's development and reform bureau, insisted such complaints are few and that the banner's administration sees to it herders are properly compensated when their grassland or life is impacted.

Above all, the prefecture's ambition also has to square with the interests of the companies that run power grids in other provinces.

However, Yu said he believes the development of a hybrid energy base in Xilin Gol will boost the region's sustainable growth and contribute to the long-term national plan to go green.

It is a win-win for both the prefecture and the nation, he added.