A new report highlighting trends in the wind industry for the year 2016 showed that although wind power has become firmly entrenched as part of the worldwide energy system, the number of new installations was down compared with 2015 due to a decrease in activity in China.
According to a report by Navigant Research titled “World Wind Energy Market Update 2017”, new wind turbine installations exceeded 54 gigawatts last year. This reflects a downturn of 14% yearly from 2015’s record of 63.1 gigawatts.
Most noted is Vestas, which regained their longtime no.1 global status for annual wind installations. They experienced double-digit growth rates as stated by the report. Following Vestas in the top ten were GE, Gamesa, Enercon, Siemens, Nordex, Envision, Ming Yang and United Power.
Also, as of last year, other major markets, including the United States, Europe and India showed consistent and stable wind deployments as stated by the report. Policy statement in the report also show that competitive power contract auctions continue to sweep across many wind markets in other countries. This, in turn, helps push the cost of wind down.
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