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Abstract

The rapid increase in world's installed wind energy capacity may have masked the power loss caused by declining global surface wind speed (termed ‘global stilling’), particularly for China with huge wind energy investments. Here, we estimated the potential impact of global stilling on wind energy production in China, using data from 1226 meteorological stations between 1971 and 2015. We show that surface wind speeds have on average declined at a rate of 5.5% decade−1, while the corresponding wind power density dropped by 24.5% decade−1. Although the decline in wind speeds has slowed after 1991, the decline in wind power density did not show this slowdown. This was attributed to the absence of slowdown in the declining trend of strong winds. Compared with the wind speed levels in the 2000s, the mean capacity factor would have dropped from 20.7% in 2001 to 14.9% in 2015, with the largest absolute change in the “Three North” regions. Furthermore, wind electricity generation would have declined by 40 TWh/a using the installed capacity of 2015, representing a decrease of 16%. The correlation analysis indicates that the decreased wind speed is most likely caused by changes in the large-scale atmospheric circulation rather than increased surface roughness.
Keywords: Wind energy; Wind power density; Global stilling; Spatial distribution; China