- China’s 16% renewables at end 2009 remains heavily reliant on good old fashioned hydro. Even with 150 GW of installed wind in 2020 with all electricity being accepted by the grid, wind penetration levels in electricity supply will still likely be hovering around or below 5% tops.

- The 8% MMS by 2020 as I understand is based on installed capacity. Given the relative capacity factors of different technologies this will translate under the 5% penetration level I estimate above.

- State developers bound by the 8% MMS dominate the market. Given the focus is on installed capacity rather than delivery to the grid the driver to ensure efficient generation is simply not there resulting in poor prior due diligence, often badly sited wind turbines and use of lower quality turbines (as you mention). Therefore to me it is the move towards placing penetration percentage quotas on the grid side that is particularly interesting.

- Capacity factor: Chinese turbines have certainly had many availability issues which will affect a simple end point capacity factor calculation. As will the random grid curtailment many wind farms have experienced (although this will affect all machines equally foreign or Chinese and should be accounted for if possible in reviewed capacity factor figures). Nevertheless even if Chinese turbines matched foreign turbine levels of availability and performance (i.e. ability to extract power from given wind) capacity factors will not shoot up anywhere close to 10% as the limiting factor will be local wind regimes. China has good resource but not nearly good enough to support average onshore capacity factors in excess of 30%. Indeed unknown issues in huge wake effects within the wind base projects and gradual saturation of the best easily accessible sites will mitigate some or maybe all of the gains in capacity factor from turbine improvement.

- Capacity factor figures themselves should be used carefully. In lower wind regimes such as those in Germany the use of turbines with larger rotor diameters ensuring more power is extracted from these lower winds often makes more sense economically than a machine with lower rated power even though the capacity factor is significantly lower. Nevertheless I agree keeping this in mind it is still a useful first pass method of comparison.

Not meaning to sound too negative - I’m optimistic about China’s wind future but hope this adds a bit for areas of improvement to the discussion.