China's first large offshore wind project, at Shanghai's East China Sea bridge, officially started operations Tuesday, the Shanghai municipal government said.

The project, has an installed annual generating capacity of 102 megawatts from 34 wind turbines with 3 MW of capacity each, and will be further expanded by another 100 MW during a second phase, the government said on its website Wednesday.

Shanghai aims to bring its offshore wind power capacity to 1.1 gigawatts after building another four offshore wind power plants, it said, without elaborating on timelines.

Planned projects include a 100-MW project in Fengxian district and 400 MW in Pudong district, for which preliminary work has started. Another 300-MW plant in Fengxian and a 200-MW plant on Hengsha island in the planning stages, it said.

China, the world's second-largest market after the U.S. in terms of installed wind capacity, aims to raise capacity to at least 70 GW by 2020 from 25 GW as of end-2009 as part of its efforts to meet a target to have non-fossil fuels account for 15% of its energy production mix by the end of next decade.

The country also aims to build a wind-energy equivalent of the Three Gorges Dam off the coast of eastern China with a generating capacity of at least 10 gigawatts, so as to meet robust power demand from the Yangtze river delta manufacturing hub in the region.

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