China''s wind power ushered in a
Time：2022/1/4 8:25:15 Tag：New energy, power system, dual carbon, supplementary energy, energy storage
After the "dual carbon" goal is established, it will point out the direction for China's energy transformation in the next 40 years. Under the new development model, the wind power industry, the main force of renewable energy, has ushered in a "golden age" of development.
In the traditional energy structure, wind power has long played the role of supplementary energy. However, in order to achieve the "dual carbon" goal, the matter of "building a new power system with new energy as the main body" has been put on the agenda. According to the forecast of relevant institutions, under the carbon neutral scenario, the total installed capacity of wind power and photovoltaics may exceed 5 billion kW, accounting for more than 80% of the total installed capacity.
At the same time, the transition from the role of supplementary energy to the main energy source has also brought the time node of the large-scale development of wind power forward abruptly, and the development of the industry has begun to accelerate.
On November 29, 2021, China's wind power grid-connected installed capacity officially exceeded the 300 million kW mark, reaching 300.15 million kW, doubling from the end of 2016.
In fact, in 2015, China's wind power grid-connected installed capacity achieved a breakthrough of 100 million kW. After that, it took four years for the industry to refresh the wind power installed capacity to a new height of 200 million kW in 2019. Today, it took only 2 years for China's wind power to achieve a leap from 200 million kW to 300 million kW.
Looking back on 2021, China's wind power will continue to develop at a high speed. In the first three quarters alone, the domestic wind power tender scale will reach 42-48GW. At the same time, many investment institutions predict that the newly installed capacity of wind power will exceed 40GW in 2021. However, it is worth noting that although all fields of wind power are showing a fiery trend, in the first year of parity for onshore wind and the final stage of the withdrawal of state subsidies for offshore wind power, wind power still shows different characteristics in different fields.
Competition heat: the price war of the whole machine
For the wind power field, the industry buzzword in 2021 will inevitably be the entry "equipment price reduction".
Affected by various factors such as supply-side contraction, abundant liquidity and demand recovery, the prices of bulk commodities continued to rise throughout the year. Under this influence, the prices of raw materials related to new energy also remained high. However, under the background of rising upstream prices, parity downstream, and squeezed profit margins, the whole machine manufacturing in the midstream of wind power has begun to cut prices in turn.
On December 25, 2021, China Resources Power Yunnan Yiliang Zhongying 80MW wind power project announced the bidding results of wind turbines. Among the 8 complete machine manufacturers participating in the bidding, the average price of equipment was 2015 yuan/kW. Among them, the electric wind power price was the lowest. At 1830 yuan/kW, the price of onshore wind turbines once again broke down the 2000 yuan/kW price line.
It is worth noting that the industry once regarded the 2,000 yuan/kW price line as the critical line of industry profits. However, the latest bidding results at the end of 2021 seem to announce that after a whole year of "price wars", the previous profit threshold may become the benchmark for equipment quotations.
More importantly, with the prolonged "price war" of OEMs, the "war" of equipment price competition has spread to the sea. Judging from the announcement of the winning bidders for the procurement of wind turbines in the offshore wind power bidding market in 2021, the price of offshore wind turbines with towers has dropped to 4,060 yuan/kW, and the price of equipment without towers has dropped below 4,000 yuan/kW, down to 3,830 yuan. /kW.
The reporter learned that in 2020, when onshore wind power was rushed to install, the price of onshore wind turbines once rose to 4,250 yuan/kW. At the same time, the price level of offshore wind turbines remained mostly above 6,500 yuan/kW. Only one year later, the equipment prices of both offshore wind turbines and onshore wind turbines have been "halved", and the price reduction of equipment prices by OEMs has almost become a development trend in the whole field and industry.
It is worth mentioning that, in fact, the sharp price reduction of wind power equipment manufacturers is not without its rationality. Senior practitioners in the industry told reporters that on the one hand, the price reduction of wind turbine equipment is an inevitable requirement for wind power to enter the era of parity; on the other hand, the industry's price reduction is also an important manifestation of technological progress.
At present, the technological progress of wind turbines is mainly reflected in the enlargement of units, and the enlargement of wind turbines is regarded as the most effective way to reduce costs in the wind power industry chain. By sorting out the industry bidding results, the reporter found that since 2021, the single-unit power of mainstream wind turbines that have won new bids for affordable onshore wind power projects in China has jumped to 4-6MW, and the single-unit power of newly won offshore wind turbines has also reached the level of 10MW.
However, Lu Wan, a person from a domestic wind power company, told reporters, "Although the large-scale unit can indeed reduce costs, for this rapid and ruthless price reduction of equipment, compared with technological progress, the market between enterprises is more difficult to achieve. Competition is the more important factor."
"Simply put, this round of price wars can be summarized as a process in which second-tier OEMs actively cut prices to expand the market and seize orders, while first-tier OEMs passively followed due to market pressure," Lu Wan added.
Fengmang Energy's statistics show that, judging from the public bidding situation in the market, the market strategy of the second tier of complete machine companies has initially worked, the share of bidders has increased rapidly, and the market gap with the first tier is narrowing. As of December 30, 2021, the winning bids of Yunda, Sany Heavy Energy and CRRC Wind Power were 5.38MW, 4.40MW and 3.44MW respectively, with a market share of 12.7%, 10.4% and 8.1% respectively.
The "Statistical Briefing on China's Wind Power Hoisting Capacity in 2020" shows that in 2020, Yunda, Sany Heavy Energy, and CRRC Wind Power will have 6.7%, 5.6% and 6.4% of the newly installed capacity market share respectively.
Rush to install: the carnival before offshore wind parity
In the field of offshore wind power, in addition to equipment price cuts, the market is still in full swing to grab the last high electricity price. A number of industry insiders said that in 2021, the scale of new offshore wind power will be about 9GW. At the same time, according to the statistics of the Wind Energy Special Committee of the China Renewable Energy Association, in 2020, the newly installed capacity of offshore wind power will be 3.84GW.
This means that in 2021, the newly installed capacity of offshore wind power may double. It is worth noting that in the face of the surge in hoisting and grid-connection demand in a short period of time, in 2021, China's offshore wind power will reproduce the "madness" of the previous onshore rush installation.
According to public data, at the beginning of November 2021, the utilization rate of domestic wind power installation ships has reached 98%, and the monthly average number of operating ships has reached 69, a year-on-year increase of 183%. But despite this, the hoisting capacity of offshore engineering vessels is still difficult to meet the grid-connection needs of offshore wind power projects in 2021.
The research report of CITIC Securities shows that from January to April 2021 alone, there will be 32 new grid-connected and under-construction projects of domestic offshore wind power, with a scale of 10.69GW. The hot scene of "hard to find a boat".
In an interview with CCTV, Li Rong, chief engineer of the Jiangsu Branch of the China Communications Third Shipping Bureau, said that at present, the rental price of sea-mounted ships has more than doubled. "Before the rush to install, the price of installing a wind turbine was about 3 million yuan. When we signed the contract, the price had reached more than 6 million yuan, and now the price of hoisting ships in the market may have risen to 14 million yuan. At the same time, auxiliary The price of ships is also rising, and the charter of a 5,000-ton carrier has risen from 600,000 to 700,000 yuan to 1.5 million to 1.6 million yuan."
At the same time, in addition to the field of hoisting, boosted by the demand for downstream grid connection, in 2021, the performance of enterprises in the offshore wind power industry chain will also rise.
The 2021 third quarter report of Mingyang Intelligent and Electric Wind Power, the leader in offshore wind power, shows that during the reporting period, the revenue growth of the above companies reached 21.84% and 88.47%, respectively, and their net profit increased by 131.71% and 252.20% year-on-year respectively; the submarine cable leader Dongfang Cable The third quarterly report for 2021 shows that during the reporting period, its revenue and net profit increased by 63.91% and 56.76% respectively. At the same time, a staff member of a submarine cable company told reporters: "During the rush to install, the profit space of the company's submarine cable business expanded rapidly, and the gross profit rate exceeded 50%."
What's more worth mentioning is that in 2021, the state subsidies for offshore wind power will be withdrawn, and the land subsidies are still unclear in other provinces except Guangdong Province, and new entrants will continue to appear in the offshore wind power field. Among them, in the field of complete machine manufacturing, Yunda Co., Ltd., which has received a lot of land orders in 2021, is one of the representatives.
It is understood that in April 2021, the first offshore unit of the 7MW platform of Yunda Co., Ltd. was rolled off the production line. At the end of September, Yunda Co., Ltd. released the "Sea Breeze" series of 9MW Sea Harrier platform WD225-9000, which will have batch delivery capabilities in 2022. Its relevant staff told reporters, "At present, although the company's offshore wind turbines have not received domestic orders, they have already started bidding."
There is no doubt that at present, for new offshore wind power companies including Yunda, entering the board at this time is doomed to miss the dividend period and the rush-loading period of high subsidies for offshore wind power, but a senior industry practitioner who did not want to be named. Tell reporters that, in fact, it is not too late for such companies to enter the game. "The market for offshore wind power is very broad, and currently limited by the cost, industrial maturity and other conditions, the development space of this market has not been fully released. In the future, with the realization of offshore wind parity, the development opportunities of this market will be will emerge together.”
On October 17, 2021, at the event of "Wind Power Partners · Zero-Carbon City Fumei Village", the specific plan for the Wind Power Partner Action was implemented. The action plan makes it clear that the industry will strive to achieve full parity by 2024 for the offshore wind power sector, which has not yet been freed from subsidies.
In addition, according to World Bank data, China's offshore wind power development potential is as high as 2,982GW, of which 1,400GW is fixed and 1,582GW is floating. According to BNEF's calculations, it is estimated that the cumulative installed capacity of China's offshore wind power during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period will reach 46.8GW, the newly installed capacity will reach 37.8GW, and the average annual newly installed capacity will reach 7.6GW. (Source: China Business News)