A few days ago, the Wind Power Development Forum of "Wind Control Action in Thousands of Towns and Villages" hosted by the Wind Energy Professional Committee of the Chinese Renewable Energy Society was held in Nanning, Guangxi. Lu Yichuan, chairman and general manager of Concord O&M, contributed wisdom to promote the steady implementation of the "Wind Control Action in Thousands of Towns and Villages" from the perspective of asset operation.
He pointed out that the asset characteristics and market changes of distributed/decentralized new energy will lead to in-depth changes in the operation management logic, and digitalization will play a key role in improving the quality of service.
Decentralized new energy assets
"Gathering" and "Dispersing"
On March 25, the "Notice on Organizing and Carrying out the "Wind Harnessing Action in Thousands of Towns and Villages" was officially issued, providing policy support for promoting the development of wind power in rural areas and promoting the rural revitalization strategy.
As a new project development model, "wind power to the countryside" is a typical application of decentralized wind power in rural scenarios, which will face challenges in development, construction, and post-investment management.
Different from the decentralized "rural wind power" that is still in its infancy, the development of the distributed photovoltaic industry has become more and more mature.
In the past, the operation and maintenance of distributed PV was often undertaken by developers or contractors themselves, but with the development of the market economy and the continuous refinement of the professional division of labor, more and more asset holders have begun to seek cooperation with professional third-party operation and maintenance service providers, a trend that has been particularly obvious in the past one to two years.
Under the dominance of market mechanisms, distributed PV assets present two typical characteristics:
First, the geographical concentration of assets is high;
75% of the projects are concentrated in seven provinces with better development conditions: Shandong, Henan, Zhejiang, Hebei, Jiangsu, Anhui and Guangdong.
Second, the investment entities are diversified and diversified, and the concentration of asset scale is low;
This is reflected in the large number of types of investors, and the single capacity of projects is on a downward trend, with the average capacity of new development projects in some provinces with large installed capacity falling to about 1MW.
In the future, distributed wind power may also follow the development trajectory of distributed photovoltaics, showing a similar evolution path.
Distributed PV/Distributed Wind Services
Next Stop: Takeaway?
Compared with various forms of power generation, such as thermal power, hydropower, centralized wind and solar, distributed wind power, distributed photovoltaic, household photovoltaic, etc., there are big differences in the capacity of power stations, regional concentration (density of power stations in relative geographical space), technical complexity on the operation and maintenance side, and service management scope.
The characteristics of various power generation assets make the key service content and service cost structure on the operation and maintenance side very different.
From the early application of thermal power and hydropower, to the centralized wind and solar power that began to rise at the beginning of this century, and then to today's distributed wind power and distributed photovoltaic, there are two major trends in service characteristics:
1. The complexity of technical operations is getting lower and lower;
2. In terms of cost structure, the proportion of travel time has increased, and the proportion of diagnosis time and elimination time has decreased.
From the perspective of geographical concentration and management scope of operation and maintenance, the service characteristics of distributed wind power and distributed photovoltaic are becoming more and more similar to those of life services such as food delivery and express delivery.
Distributed/decentralized new energy services
Can the O2O model be applied?
In the takeaway and express delivery industry, the successful application of the O2O (Online to Offline) model has enabled the service process of "convenient online ordering + efficient offline delivery" to be realized.
Although the O2O model has been successful in the field of life services, it is difficult to directly apply the existing model in terms of service digitalization of distributed photovoltaic and distributed wind power.
First, the offline link of the comparison service:
The content of new energy services includes on-site arrival, fault diagnosis, manual repair, detection and testing, etc., which is more complex than the logistics and distribution services provided by takeaway and express delivery.
Due to the differences in the product structure of the power generation equipment itself, the operation and maintenance technology of distributed wind power is more complex than that of distributed photovoltaics.
Second, compare the value of the service and the corresponding evaluation criteria:
The delivery result of takeaway and express delivery is a standardized commodity, and its service value is reflected in the timeliness of delivery and the integrity of the product, and it is easy to form a unified and real-time service evaluation standard and result feedback mechanism, and based on this, a digital evaluation mechanism is established for service personnel.
The knight status and service evaluation of a food delivery platform
On the other hand, the service value of new energy services is reflected in "low cost + more power generation", but there are many factors that affect this result, including power grid relationship, equipment reliability, meteorological conditions, etc.
It is difficult to directly "equate" between service delivery and service value, and establish a digital mechanism to evaluate delivery personnel accordingly.
Therefore, in both online and offline parts, the digitalization of new energy services is much more complex than life services.
"There is no doubt that in the new energy service industry, digitalization will become the key to improving service quality."
The equipment is the object of the service, and the service and its effect are the actual products.
In order to realize the digitalization of services, it is necessary to first take into account the scale and quality of services, solve the problem of offline high-quality supply, and pay attention to factors other than equipment.
In the operation process of new energy assets over the years, Concord O&M has not only accumulated rich experience in the operation and maintenance technology of centralized wind and solar and distributed photovoltaics, but also accumulated massive resource data, power station operation data and equipment data, and explored a set of mature and effective solutions in the practice of service digitalization:
Based on the construction of an internal/external dual closed-loop of task flow (equipment data analysis→ standardized operation and maintenance sequence→ task execution→ effect analysis →root cause analysis based on process data), and management flow (management countermeasures and delivery personnel evaluation system based on task flow and service quality), the deep integration of digitalization and new energy service scenarios is realized.
Therefore, for distributed wind power, this form of power supply has the characteristics of "small and scattered" similar to distributed photovoltaics, and has the characteristics of high technical complexity of operation and maintenance similar to centralized wind power, and Concord O&M has industry-leading technical reserves and management experience.
Optimize the cooperation mode
Creation of "Community of Interests"
In the future, with the deepening of the market-oriented reform of electricity, the price of new energy will continue to fall, which will lead to an increase in the uncertainty of the expected income of new energy assets.
In this context, in order to ensure the return rate of the project in the whole life cycle, the weight of operation and maintenance costs in the overall operating costs will be further reduced.
Especially for distributed/decentralized new energy assets, unattended or less attended will become an inevitable trend. In this O&M model, personnel efficiency will be the variable that produces dimensional competition differences, and the "saturation" + "responsiveness" of maximizing work is the objective function of the future, and the digital tools of power trading must also intervene.
In addition, the cooperative relationship between the investor and the operator will gradually change from the traditional contractual relationship between Party A and Party B to a "community of interests" with risk sharing and benefit sharing. With this transformation, the operators are involved in the operation of the power plant to optimize the services of each link, seek greater benefits for investors, and share profits from them.
This requires all participants in the industry to continuously innovate and explore new service models and technical means, and seek better solutions and development paths to adapt to the transformation and development of the distributed/decentralized new energy market.