(Yicai Global) Nov. 4 -- China is on track to overtake the UK this year as the country with the biggest grid-connected off-shore wind power capacity in the world, Shanghai Securities News reported yesterday, citing the Global Wind Energy Council.

The total installed capacity of Chinese offshore wind turbines in operation came to 10.42 million kilowatts as of the end of April, already more than the UK’s 10.21 million kW at the end of last year, said Chen Lizhi, general manager of Haiyang Off-shore Wind Power.

Since then, newly added capacity has continued at a ferocious pace, bringing the country’s total installed capacity to 13.19 kW as of Sept. 30, a 75.7 percent year on year increase, according to the China Renewable Energy Monitoring Center.

The next few years will be crucial for technological innovations that can help bring costs down, said Qin Haiyan, secretary-general of the wind energy expert committee at the Chinese Renewable Energy Society. Large-capacity machine sets, specially designed construction ships and the universalization of digital technologies can all help reduce costs.

Offshore wind now accounts for 4.4 percent of the country’s total wind energy generation, an increase of 1 percentage point from the same period last year.

China has also been the world’s biggest market for offshore wind power for the last three years, with a three million kW hike in demand in 2020 from the year before.

Chinese residents are expecting to have low-cost access to the Internet using wind-generated power within the next three years. Prices have halved over the years but there is still room for improvement, a market insider said.

Editor: Kim Taylor