China to break its own record: World’s new largest wind farm could power 13 million homes

China plans to break its own record for the world's largest wind farm by constructing a new one before 2025 that could power more than 13 million homes.

The 14th five-year plan for Chaozhou, China's Guangdong province, was released last week, outlining the city's ambitious plans for a 43.3 gigawatt (GW) project in the Taiwan Strait.

Work on the project will begin “before 2025.” It will surpass the largest wind farm in the world once it is finished, according to Guangdong province officials.

The Jiuquan Wind Power base in China, a huge facility with a 20 gigawatt capacity, presently holds the distinction of being the world’s largest wind farm.

A city in the nearby Fujian Province earlier this year proposed a 1 trillion yuan ($138 billion) project that included 50 gigawatts of offshore wind.

With more than 25 percent of the world's wind power capacity, China is claimed to be a world leader in wind energy.

Capacity: 13 million homes

The 10-kilometer-long farm, which will have thousands of strong wind turbines, will operate between 75 and 185 kilometers (47 and 115 miles) offshore.

And because of the region's distinctive topographical features and windy location, these turbines will be able to run between 43 percent to 49 percent of the time, meaning 3,800 to 4,300 hours each year.

A gigawatt is one billion watts, and 3 million solar panels are required to produce one gigawatt of power. 100 million LEDs or 300,000 typical European homes may each be powered by one gigawatt.

The facility's 43.3 GW of power-generating capacity could supply electricity to 13 million households, which is equal to 4.3 billion LED lights, as per Euronews.

Over 99 percent of Norway's electricity comes from hydropower plants with a 31 GW capacity, which is less than the new Chinese wind farm project. The record-breaking offshore farm would be bigger than all of the power plants in Norway combined.

World’s offshore wind power capacity

The world's combined onshore and offshore wind power capacity hit 830 GW by the end of 2021. Over half of this comes from China.

Over the previous five years, the country installed more offshore wind power capacity than any other nation in the world.

By 2025, the superpower wishes to have a third of its electricity come from renewable sources. In contrast to many other nations, it has a distant goal of reaching net zero by 2060.

“We will work actively and prudently toward the goals of reaching peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality,” China’s President Xi Jinping said On October 16 while addressing the party congress.

“Based on China’s energy and resource endowments, we will advance initiatives to reach peak carbon emissions in a well-planned and phased way, in line with the principle of getting the new before discarding the old.”

Onshore wind is a mature technology, present in 115 nations worldwide, whereas offshore wind is still in the early stages of expansion, with capacity present in only 19 countries, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), an independent intergovernmental organization headquartered in Paris.

As per IEA, 2021 saw a record increase in wind generation; however, considerably greater growth is required to reach the Net Zero Scenario trajectory.