Thomas Freidman may just be right, China is going to clean our clocks in wind energy and wind production. How is it that China announces a 17 billion monster size wind farm and T Boone Pickens just ”talks alot”??? China is building SEVEN of these Three Gorges Size Wind Farms and all are funded by the government in the Chinese green stimulus plans. IF APWR can deliver anything in wind turbines, APWR is going to soar for future considerations given the size and scope of the China government wind plans! The following taken from Wall Street Journal Wind story……

July 6, 2009, 9:58 AM ET.Wind Power: China’s Massive–and Cheap–Bet on Wind Farms

By Keith Johnson
Is China planning not just the world’s biggest wind farm—but also the cheapest?

No zoning problems at least (AP)
Xinhua news service reported yesterday that China will break ground this month on the “Three Gorges of Wind Power” in the northwest part of the country. The wind farm will start out big, with plans for 5 gigawatts in 2010, before growing truly gigantic, with plans for 20 gigawatts in 2020.

Context: T. Boone Pickens’ massive but stalled Texas wind farm aims for 4 gigawatts. And there’s more: China has another half-dozen mammoth wind farms in the works, each on a similar scale.

According to Xinhua, the project’s total cost will exceed $17.6 billion. What’s less clear is whether that refers to the 20 gigawatts on the drawing board, or the 40 gigawatts that could theoretically be installed. Either way, when you crunch the numbers, China’s new clean-energy poster child looks stunningly cheap: less than $1 million per megawatt. That’s three times cheaper than Mr. Pickens’ proposed U.S. wind farm.

Why’s that? Well, the cost of a wind farm is largely determined by the cost of the wind turbines. Chinese-made machines are cheaper than those made by European and U.S. rivals. And these would be very locally made: Xinhua notes that the wind farm is part of a plan to spur local employment by building parts of the turbines there.

Is it too good to be true? Maybe. As Keith Bradsher noted recently in the NYT, China’s headlong push into clean energy sometimes tramples economic reality:

Some top Chinese regulators even worry that Beijing’s mandates are pushing companies too far too fast. The companies may be deliberately underbidding for the right to build new projects and then planning to go back to the government later and demand compensation once the projects lose money. “The problem is we have so many stupid enterprises,” said Li Junfeng, who is the deputy director general for energy research at China’s top economic planning agency and the secretary general of the government-run Renewable Energy Industries Association.

Tom Friedman is still fretting that China is set to clean America’s clock in the clean-energy race. But at what price, really?

The race to supply this monstrous 17 billion China Wind Farm is in full gear and if the Chinese do what they usually do in domestic stimulus packages, they award 70% to the Chinese companies.

AMSC is the direct supplier to Sinovel and this contract is sure to be expanded as Sinovel is one of only three domestic wind turbine producers who has capacity to supply a part of this monstrous project. Goldwind and Sinovel together running 24/7 on this monstrous contract could not supply half of the capacity. Will China break its long running tradition and allow the Gamesas’ and Vestas’ and GE’s into China for this big project????

Will small fry APWR actually trip across a monstrous chunk of future wind power production???? Lots of questions and we await the answers as this monstrous contract plays out, and this is only one of 7 massive Three Gorges wind power farm projects in the making, the other six will be announced at later date and time!