Wind turbines in China saw their average time in operation shrink sharply in 2012, data released Monday by the country's energy watchdog showed, underlining the need to boost grid construction to absorb more wind power.

The nation's wind turbines operated for an average of 1,890 hours each in 2012, 30 hours less than the previous year, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said in a statement Monday.

In North China, Northeast China and Northwest China, where wind energy is abundant, wind turbines have been running below capacity, the statement said.

In eastern parts of Inner Mongolia and Northeast China's Jilin Province, 50 percent of wind turbines have not been running at full capacity in winter, it said.

"In some regions, the growth of wind power has outpaced the increase in the load the grid can bear," Zhou Dadi, vice-chairperson of the China Energy Research Society, told the Global Times Monday.

"In winter, wind turbines have to make way for co-generation units or coal-fired units to supply heat for residents, causing a waste of wind power," Zhou said.

China's installed wind energy capacity hit 63 million kilowatts in 2012, making the country a global leader in wind energy installations, according to the NEA.

Wind energy also became the third largest power source after coal-fired power and hydropower, according to official data.

But despite being the largest wind energy country in the world, China is facing increasingly prevalent under-use of wind turbines.

China's idle wind power capacity totaled 20 billion kilowatt-hours in 2012, the NEA said in a document in late March.

In March, the NEA issued a notice to encourage the use of wind power to supply heat, in the hope of improving the efficiency of wind power and reducing the use of coal, which is said to be one of the culprits behind smoggy weather in the winter.

"It is a wonderful aspiration but not feasible now because wind power is still quite expensive energy. Without sufficient government subsidies, heat companies have little motivation to use it," Zhou said. Using wind energy to generate power requires large investments in equipment.