Photo by Ma Yueran

Interface News Reporter |

From October 16th to 18th, the 2024 Beijing International Wind Energy Conference and Exhibition was held at the China International Exhibition Center (Shunyi Hall) in Beijing, ·, which is the most important event in the domestic wind power industry every year, and many enterprises take advantage of this event to innovate.

According to Jiemian News, although the trend of large-scale wind turbines has not changed, the leading machine manufacturers have not blindly focused on the release of new unit products, but have seen more companies emphasizing the added value of wind turbines, expanding categories while demonstrating the strength of wind power, and focusing on solutions in the overall new energy field.

Wind Energy Exhibition Photo by Ma Yueran

Among the leading enterprises, Sany Renewable Energy (688349.SH) highlighted its latest release of the world's largest wind turbine testing platform at the booth. On October 15, China's first and the world's largest 35 MW six-degree-of-freedom wind turbine test bench was officially put into operation at Sany Renewable Energy Wind Power Test Center.

The

test bench is completely independently developed and designed by Sany Renewable Energy and built with a 100% domestic supply chain, which is the world's largest wind turbine transmission test bench with the highest bearing power, the highest degree of reduction and the most comprehensive verification, which can meet the verification needs of the whole life cycle of the 35 MW unit.

Sany Renewable Energy believes that China is at the forefront of large-megawatt design and development, as well as the digital transformation of production models. However, at the same time, the doubts that "the large-scale stall development of wind power cannot guarantee reliability" have come one after another, so the existence and innovation of the whole machine test platform are needed.

Envision Energy has launched the latest new platform for onshore and sea intelligent wind turbines, Model T/Z Pro, with the first onshore unit EN-202/8.35MW, for applications in regional markets of 7m/s and above. The first offshore unit EN-272/16.7MW has super anti-typhoon function and is suitable for the next generation of offshore wind farm applications. At the same time, the company released the "Galileo Super Perception System" to manage the health of wind turbines.

Industry leader Goldwind (002202.SZ) has launched a new generation of onshore high-performance flagship GWH204 Ultra series products, with an impeller diameter of 204 meters and a single unit capacity of 4-10MW. In the face of deep sea, the company launched a new generation of deep-sea flagship product GWH300-20 (25) MW, which has an impeller diameter of 300 meters and a power covering 20-25MW.

In addition, CRRC (601766.SH) brought three major solutions related to wind turbines, wind power components industry chain supply and wind, solar and hydrogen storage integration; Yunda Co., Ltd. (300772.SZ) upgraded the 16-18MW floating "Sea Eagle" unit; Mingyang Intelligent (601615.SH) exhibited the "Tiancheng" twin-rotor floating wind power platform and various offshore and onshore wind power solutions.

"Compared with last year, although the wind energy exhibition is still hot, it doesn't feel like there is much new." More than one exhibitor expressed a similar view to the interface news reporter. A business person told the interface news reporter that the technological innovation of the whole machine seems to have reached a bottleneck period, and there are fewer heavy voices in this exhibition.

Compared with the hot new energy industries such as photovoltaics, lithium batteries, and energy storage in recent years, the wind power industry, which entered the era of parity earlier, is relatively flat. However, it can be seen at the exhibition site that there is still an endless stream of people who are interested in wind power and come to participate.

Wind Energy Exhibition Photo by Ma Yueran

On the first day of the launch, the focus was on the "Self-Discipline Convention on Maintaining a Fair Competition Environment in China's Wind Power Industry" signed by 12 wind power manufacturers. "Involution" and "low-price competition" are still the central topics of the new energy industry in recent years.

Qin Haiyan, secretary-general of the Wind Energy Professional Committee of the Chinese Renewable Energy Society, said at the meeting that at present, the "price war" is eroding the foundation of the development of the wind power industry, which is not conducive to the high-quality development of wind power projects, hurts the survival foundation of wind power manufacturing enterprises, and restricts the sustainable development of the wind power industry, which also adversely affects the entire economic and social development. In the future, it is necessary to focus on solving three major problems, including vicious competition at low prices, malicious defamation of competitors, and obviously unfair agreement clauses.

At the forum, Lou Yimin, senior vice president of Envision Energy and president of the wind turbine product line, pointed out that the current involution of the wind power industry is a "prisoner's dilemma", and the fight is not who can win, but who will not lose. Wind power is a new quality productivity, advanced productivity, wind turbine is a long-life demand, high-value investment equipment, we must adhere to long-termism, pay attention to 25 years, 30 years of the whole life cycle of the income situation.

Lou Yimin believes that China's wind power, which once stood on the shoulders of giants, has now stepped into the "no man's land", and every step forward is a new exploration, which means that the wind turbine will enter the "creation" stage from "manufacturing", and the development of larger and larger new units requires massive cost investment, including a large amount of investment in all working conditions and multi-level testing and verification should be reflected in the price of the end product, rather than taking the manufacturing cost as the price orientation, resulting in the value of creation and innovation can not be recognized by the market. This is also the reason for involution.

In recent years, fierce competition in the market has also brought about frequent safety accidents, and the rapid iteration of large megawatt units has also made everyone pay more attention to safety issues.

Cao Zhigang, president of Goldwind, said in a speech at the meeting that any industry is facing the challenge of the "impossible triangle law" that requires both "economy" and "high quality" and "fast growth", and wind power is no exception. The price involution has ignited the speed of wind power competition, which is most typically reflected in the shorter and shorter breakthrough cycle of single-unit capacity records. The main contradiction of each cycle is different, in the context of good economy and rapid growth of wind power, wind power as an equipment industry, "high quality" and "high performance" may be the right path for the industry to maintain a spiral.

In Cao Zhigang's view, the focus of the industry should return to the essence of optimizing the LCOE of the whole life cycle, so as to stabilize the foundation of the equipment industry.

At the roundtable dialogue at the exhibition, a number of executives expressed their views that with the rapid increase in wind power installed capacity and the rapid iteration of technology, the number of quality problems and safety accidents will increase, but the overall is controllable. Wind power enterprises should do a good job in risk management and control throughout the life cycle, and take targeted response measures from the design, manufacturing, and project management levels.

Like other new energy industries, the strategy of going overseas and globalization is also the "top priority" of wind power enterprises.

Previously, a number of industry insiders told interface news reporters that last month's Germany Fort International Wind Energy Exhibition was unprecedentedly hot, and the scale of Chinese wind power enterprises participating in the exhibition reached a record high, and the number of Chinese enterprises participating in the exhibition increased by 8 times compared with the previous session, covering all links of the wind power industry chain from the whole machine, blades, towers, bearings, castings, etc.

This is partly due to the fact that Wind Energy Hamburg is one of the most important wind power exhibitions in the world, and it is also the first after the pandemic. Wind Energy Hamburg is held every two years.

The most important reason is that Chinese wind power companies are accelerating their overseas expansion and going global. Among the machine manufacturers, those who participated in the Hamburg Wind Energy Exhibition include Mingyang Intelligence, Sany Renewable Energy, Yunda Co., Ltd., Dongfang Electric, etc.

At this wind energy exhibition, industry participants generally believe that the most important thing for global supply chains is free competition, and competition will drive innovation. In the Chinese market, all competition is about cost and speed, but wind turbines are not as important as the average industry due to their high maintenance costs and energy security. In addition to cost and speed, it is also necessary to consider the cost of the whole life cycle of the wind turbine, which cannot be "compromised" in quality. When going overseas, in addition to economic considerations, enterprises also need to consider how the Chinese-funded industrial chain going overseas can have a positive impact on the local community and society in the future.

Wind Energy Exhibition Photo by Ma Yueran

In 2024, China's cumulative installed wind power capacity has exceeded 500 million kilowatts, and there are still long-term certainty prospects for wind power in the future.

Cui Guangsheng, deputy director of the General Division of the New and Renewable Energy Department of the National Energy Administration, said that since the beginning of this year, domestic wind power has maintained a steady development trend. From January to August this year, the country's new installed wind power capacity was 33.61 million kilowatts, an increase of 4.69 million kilowatts over the same period last year, and as of the end of August, the country's wind power was connected to the grid for a total of 470 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 20%. In the first eight months, 2 million kilowatts of new grid-connected capacity of offshore wind power were added, a year-on-year increase of 58%.

In addition, by the end of last year, China had exported nearly 15.6 million kilowatts of wind turbines to 54 countries and regions, and 10 of the top 15 new installed capacity companies in the world came from China.

Cui Guangsheng said that the next step will be to unswervingly deepen the energy revolution and promote the high-quality development of wind power with greater efforts. Specifically, it includes: first, accelerating the construction of large-scale wind power photovoltaic bases; Second, steadily promote the development and construction of offshore wind power; Third, organize and implement the action of harnessing the wind in thousands of towns and villages according to local conditions; Fourth, actively support the consumption of green wind power certificates, and fifth, work together to promote international cooperation in wind power.

Cui Guangsheng believes that only by strengthening cooperation in the wind power industry of various countries can the resilience and security of the global wind power supply chain be improved, and the global green energy transformation and climate change can be better promoted. Unnecessary trade frictions will only lead to a slowdown in market growth and rising costs, jeopardizing the realization of energy transition goals, and it is recommended that countries strive to build a fair, reasonable, open and non-discriminatory trading system and rule system, so as to provide fair market access opportunities for all enterprises and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results.