SSEA has a primary discussion about the cost and the technology that provide impetus for the wind industry development.

Cost – the cost of wind energy decreases in these years. However it is still higher than the traditional fossil fuel. The largest proportion of the wind energy cost belongs to the initial construction cost, while the maintenance expense is not higher than 5% of the total cost. It is reported by Chinese local newspaper that the total construction cost of the wind farm is around 8000rmb/kW, while the construction cost of traditional energy is only around 4000rmb/kW. There is possibility to reduce the construction cost, if Chinese local industry can successfully develop their own wind turbines or assembly parts to replace these current products which are imported from Europe. However, there are many technical issues to conquer during this process.

Technology – there have been very hot discussions in technical forum of Goldwind, which is the largest player in wind energy in China. Since the generation of wind power requires a sophisticated system, the challenges of wind generating equipments in technology fall in many aspects, electrical engineering (generator, power conversion, grid connection), mechanical engineering (gearbox, blade), control (maximal power point tracking, control system) and civil engineering (site construction). To get along well with all these issues, the Chinese wind industry needs more engineering experience, knowledge transfer and the favorable policy. SSEA technical team would review these factors respectively in later sessions.

Chinese newspaper talked about the challenges in Chinese wind energy development. 

http://www.freshpower.cn/news/news_detail.asp?NewsId=19624

Discussion of technical challenges in goldwind technical forum

http://my.goldwind.cn/bbs/archiver/?tid-137.html

Case study of the challenges in JiuQuan wind farm development, which is the largest wind farm project in the world.

http://www.86ne.com/Wind/200807/Wind_149392.html