China is likely to reduce its wind energy installations by 2 GW from the anticipated 24 GW to 22 GW in 2020, according to GlobalData.

The decrease in wind installations will be due to the tightened capacity for equipment manufacturing and provision of engineering, procurement and construction services.

The halt of production alongside supply and logistics issues is likely to create tremendous backlogs in orders in the first and second fiscal quarters of 2020 outside China as well.

Despite major Chinese turbine original equipment manufacturers such as Goldwind, Envision, Mingyang and Shanghai Electric, along with foreign companies such as Vestas, Siemens Gamesa and GE Renewable Energy, resuming production in the first week of February, facilities are not yet operating at their full capacity due to the quarantine and most office work is being done remotely by employees from their homes.

China has the largest installed wind energy capacity with its in excess of 230 GW contributing to more than 35 per cent of global installations.

Somik Das, Senior Power Analyst at GlobalData, said: “There has been a significant drop in the number of cases in Wuhan, Hubei, indicating that China is crawling its way out of the pandemic. However, with the prevailing situation still critical, it is not clear by when the situation will stabilise. Considering the prevailing conditions, China is expected to extend the onshore wind feed-in-tariff deadline, which otherwise was supposed to expire on December 31, 2020.

“If China can continue to restore normalcy, it would be expected, that the Chinese wind industry would witness higher installation in the second quarter of the fiscal year 2020, to capitalise on the delayed feed-in-tarrif (FIT) deadline. Manufacturing is also likely to increase to make up for the losses incurred during the first half of the year.”