Chinese wind turbine manufacturers are racing to develop increasingly larger turbines this year, industry officials said.

The latest progress in this area has been made by Huayi Electric, a leading Chinese wind turbine manufacturer, which announced on Friday that it will shift about one-quarter of its 190 million yuan (29 million U.S. dollars) in funds raised from non-publicly issued stocks to strengthen the development of its 6-megawatt (MW)-capacity wind turbines.

Huayi said the earmarked funds of 45 million yuan were previously planned to be used to develop 5-MW turbines.

In late May, Sinovel, China' s largest wind turbine manufacturer, announced that it had produced a 6-MW prototype that can be used on onshore, offshore and inter-tidal wind farms, the first of its kind in the country.

Huayi' s strategy of developing even larger wind turbines is based on an agreement signed on May 10 with the Netherlands' MECAL B.V, a famous wind turbine designer, to jointly develop 6-MW offshore wind turbines.

Under their agreement, Huayi and MECAL B.V will complete a 6-MW prototype for use on offshore wind farms before March 2013. Huayi will have exclusive ownership and use of the turbines. The prototypes will be installed in September 2013.

In addition to Sinovel and Huayi, other leading Chinese wind turbine manufacturers, including Goldwind and Guodian United Power, have set out to develop 6-MW turbines.

In November 2010, Goldwind announced that it would invest 550 million yuan in its branch in east China' s Jiangsu province to develop 6-MW direct-drive permanent magnetic wind turbines. It will launch a 6-MW prototype in early 2012.

Sinovel previously announced that it is engaged in developing even larger 10-MW turbines, without offering any details on the project.

At present, 1.5-MW wind turbines are the most common types of turbines used in the Chinese wind power industry. China has only a few turbine manufacturers capable of producing 3-MW and 5-MW turbines.

Last October, Sinovel and Xiangtan Electrical Machine Co. Ltd. (XEMC), based in central China' s Hunan province, both produced their own 5-MW prototypes.

Industry officials said leading Chinese wind turbines manufacturers are obsessed with developing 6-MW turbines because they wish to sharpen their competitive edges.

Tao Gang, vice president of Sinovel, said "with the development of the Chinese wind power industry, particularly offshore wind power, it has become an inevitable trend for wind farms to use larger capacity turbines because of their higher efficiency and smaller maintenance costs."

Shi Lishan, deputy director of the new energy and renewable energy department of the National Energy Bureau (NEB), said "offshore wind power is the direction of international energy development. It is also a priority for the development of China's wind power industry."

In 2010, China's offshore wind power industry had a total installed capacity of 106 MWs, the sixth largest in the world, according to the China Wind Energy Association (CWEA).

In October of 2010, China completed a public tender for four offshore wind farms in Jiangsu Province, totaling 1 gigawatt (GW) of installed capacity. Construction on the wind farms will start this year.

Industry officials estimate China will have 5 GWs in installed capacity in 2015 and expand it to 30 GWs by 2020.