Offshore wind power has been coming out of good news recently, and the industry's prosperity has been rebounding.
Domestically, with the gradual resumption of the sea breeze project in Jiangsu Province and the implementation of the competition results in the sea area under the provincial management of Guangdong Province, the factors hindering the development of sea breeze may be gradually cleared, and the installation progress of sea breeze is expected to be accelerated.
Overseas, the UK has significantly increased the maximum execution tariffs for conventional and floating wind projects by 66% and 52%.
On November 20, nine North Sea Energy Cooperation Countries (NSEC) including Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany launched a collective bidding program to auction about 15GW of sea wind per year, for a total of about 100GW of sea wind from this year to 2030.
As a wind power powerhouse, China's high-quality offshore wind parts enterprises with global product competitiveness are expected to continue to benefit.
Why is offshore wind power important, and what are its advantages over onshore wind power?
One is that offshore wind power has obvious advantages
Offshore wind power is an important development direction of the new generation of wind power, and compared with onshore wind power, offshore wind power has the characteristics of high stability, large wind speed and easy consumption.
Wind speeds are typically 20% higher offshore than those on the coast, and there are few quiet wind periods on shore to generate electricity for longer periods than onshore. For wind turbines, the terrain is complex and rough, and the wind speed at the same height is often very different, resulting in the fragility of wind turbines, while there are few such risks at sea, so offshore wind turbines can provide a larger and more stable source of power.
In addition, as far as the mainland is concerned, the economy in the eastern region is relatively more developed, and the development of offshore wind power is more conducive to local digestion and reduces power loss in the transportation process.
One is the rapid development of clean energy under the background of "dual carbon".
By 2025, the proportion of non-fossil energy consumption will reach about 20%, by 2030, the proportion of non-fossil energy consumption will reach about 25%, and by 2060, the proportion of non-fossil energy consumption will reach more than 80%. This is the resolute goal of the Action Plan for Peaking Carbon Emissions before 2030.
At present, in the mainland's energy structure, wind power has the fastest year-on-year growth. From the perspective of the mainland's energy structure, thermal power is still the most important source of electricity in the mainland, with a cumulative installed capacity of more than half of the total.
However, in terms of growth rate, the growth rate of new energy installations such as wind power and photovoltaic power has been significantly higher than that of thermal power. Among them, wind power increased the fastest year-on-year. As of 2022, the cumulative installed capacity of wind and electricity in mainland China reached 305 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 29.0%, making it the fastest growing energy type among hydropower (5.5%), photovoltaic (24.1%), and thermal power (3.5%) in the same period.
The global installed capacity is growing rapidly, and the offshore wind power market is broad
In 2015, the world's major countries put forward the long-term goal of limiting the temperature rise to 1.5°C by 2050 in the Paris Agreement, thus kicking off a large-scale energy transition.
If based on the assumption that global warming exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius, 90% of global electricity consumption will come from renewable sources by 2050, with wind and solar power accounting for nearly 70% of the total scale of electricity consumption.
From 2017 to 2021, the global installed capacity of offshore wind power showed an upward trend, and the growth rate of global offshore wind power installed capacity accelerated significantly as more and more countries around the world carried out offshore wind power.
According to the Global Offshore Wind Power Report 2022, the new installed capacity of global offshore wind power in 2021 was 21.1GW, an increase of 207.89% over 2020, the largest increase in history, and the cumulative installed capacity of global offshore wind power in 2021 was 56GW, an increase of 55.56% over 2020.
As a large country with abundant marine wind energy resources, China has been expanding the scale of offshore wind power development in recent years, and offshore wind power has always ranked first in the global wind power market
According to the National Energy Administration, China's new offshore wind power capacity increased from 0.59 GW in 2016 to 16.9 GW in 2021, with an average annual compound growth rate of 95.6%, and the cumulative installed capacity increased from 1.63 GW in 2016 to 26.39 GW in 2021, with a compound annual growth rate of 74.5%. China has become the world's largest country in terms of cumulative installed offshore wind power.
So, what is the industrial chain of offshore wind power and what are the investment opportunities?
The offshore wind power industry chain consists of three parts: upstream component suppliers, midstream machine assembly enterprises, and downstream operation and maintenance parties. Among them, the main value is concentrated in the upstream and midstream of the industrial chain, which is sorted out in detail below.
Upstream: It mainly includes the constituent materials of wind turbines, such as blades, wind power frames, castings, converters, generators, slewing rings, nacelle covers, main control systems, flanges, submarine cables, bearings, etc.
Blades: Wind turbine blades are one of the key core components of wind turbines, and the design, manufacture and operation status of the blades directly affect the performance and power generation efficiency of the whole turbine, and have a significant impact on the operating costs of wind farms.
Gearbox: According to the working principle of wind power generation, the larger the radius of the wind turbine, the greater the power of the single machine, the lower the power generation cost, the large-scale wind turbine is the trend; the wind turbine gearbox is located in the nacelle, is the weak link in the transmission chain of the megawatt wind turbine, is easy to overload and the damage rate of the high rate of components, the reliability of the offshore high-power wind power gearbox plays a decisive role in the life of the wind turbine.
Bearings: At present, the high-end bearings of high-power models in mainland China mainly rely on imports, and the premium of high-end bearings is more obvious.
Castings: The mainland is the main production capacity of castings, but due to the stricter environmental protection policies and the long expansion cycle of castings themselves, the growth rate of domestic casting production capacity has been low in the past two years.
The midstream is manufacturing and supporting, including complete machines, towers, cables, etc. The top four manufacturers with the highest market share of offshore wind turbines in the global market are Siemens Gamesa, Mitsubishi Vestas, Shanghai Electric and Goldwind.
In terms of domestic offshore wind power manufacturers, Shanghai Electric, Envision Energy, Goldwind Technology, and Mingyang Intelligent occupy a large share of the newly installed capacity.
From the perspective of the performance of the secondary market, in all links of the wind power industry chain, the share price of the tower is the first, and the performance of the tower is also outstanding compared to other links.
The layout of the tower mainly involves four enterprises, Taisheng Wind Energy, Tianshun Wind Energy, Daikin Heavy Industries and Tianneng Heavy Industries.
Among the four tower layout enterprises, the year-on-year growth rate of revenue and net profit of Taisheng Wind Energy in the first three quarters was unparalleled, and the revenue and profit in Q3 maintained a relatively high growth trend in a single quarter.
Specifically, Taisheng Wind Energy's revenue in the first three quarters was 2.978 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 40.29%, and its net profit was 236 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 41.82%. Among them, Q3 revenue was 1.308 billion yuan, an increase of 54.89% year-on-year and 51.27% month-on-month, and net profit was 118 million yuan, an increase of 78.06% year-on-year and 324.68% month-on-month.
Taisheng Wind Energy's performance exceeded expectations due to its excellent overseas profits, with Q3 single-quarter shipments increasing by 62% month-on-month.
In terms of orders, according to the company's semi-annual report, the orders in hand were 4.847 billion yuan, including 3.472 billion yuan for onshore wind power and 1.016 billion yuan for offshore wind power, far exceeding similar companies.
Downstream: including wind power development and operation, residential electricity, industrial electricity, agricultural electricity, commercial electricity, etc. The downstream industry is mainly responsible for the operation and use of wind power, that is, the electric energy generated by wind power is transmitted to the grid and supplied to various users.
From the perspective of the entire industry chain, the upstream and midstream links of offshore wind power have a high technical threshold and require a lot of R&D investment and professional knowledge, while the downstream links require rich experience and professional skills.
At present, the global offshore wind power industry is showing a trend of continuous development, and with the continuous progress of technology and the continuous reduction of costs, offshore wind power will become one of the important directions of future energy development.
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