Since the beginning of the year, the most talked-about topic of wind power in the outside world is not only the hand-to-hand bidding of the whole machine manufacturer and the trend of large-scale wind turbines, but also the growth curve of the application market.
In April this year, the National Development and Reform Commission, the National Energy Administration, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs jointly issued the Notice on Organizing and Carrying out the "Wind Control Action in Thousands of Towns and Villages" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice"), which triggered continuous discussions in the industry and once pulled the daily limit of many wind power stocks.
"The wind power to the countryside cannot be simply understood as building a few wind turbines in the countryside, it has a special meaning that is different from the traditional understanding." Qin Haiyan, secretary-general of the Wind Energy Committee (CWEA) of the China Renewable Energy Society, stressed to the first financial reporter that the "Wind Control Action in Thousands of Towns and Villages" is a new model that combines wind power with rural revitalization and rural energy revolution. The in-depth integration of wind power with rural revitalization and rural energy revolution is the goal and mission of the "Wind Harnessing Action".
This realization shatters the expectations of practitioners about the upper limit of onshore wind development. A number of research reports have proposed that rural wind power, which was once sluggish, is expected to open up space for the growth of wind power under the promotion of top-level policies.
Not only onshore wind power, but also offshore wind power is gradually realizing its market potential.
The first financial reporter learned during a recent investigation that in the context of a sharp decline in the cost of wind power, the yield of offshore wind projects invested by a number of energy central enterprises has been better than that of the previous national subsidy period, and the innovation ability of domestic enterprises to cope with complex sea conditions is also improving. According to CWEA data, the installed capacity of offshore wind power exceeded 7GW in 2023, and it is expected to exceed 10GW in 2024.
Under the good momentum of land and sea advancement, many institutions predict that 2024 will usher in a small peak of domestic wind power growth.
"Wind power to the countryside", the next growth outlet?
For wind power people, "wind power to the countryside" is not an unfamiliar word. As early as 2021, after the National Energy Administration officially proposed the "Thousands of Towns and Villages to Harness the Wind" plan, many provinces and cities across the country have successively introduced local wind power construction plans, but the effect is relatively limited.
Until last month, the notice issued by the three departments injected long-lost confidence into rural wind power. At the 8th Symposium on Wind Power Development in the Middle East and South of China and the Wind Power Development Forum held in Nanning, Guangxi Province, one of the impressive details was that the forum was extremely popular, with a full house from morning to night. According to the organizers, this year the number of participants exceeded 800.
It is worth noting that the stereotype that "wind power goes to the countryside is to install several wind turbines in the countryside", this stereotype has been denied many times in interviews. A number of interviewees said that the historical mission of rural wind power is to increase rural collective income and promote rural revitalization. This means that even if rural wind power is currently facing constraints such as land resources and grid consumption, all parties have a shared responsibility to provide more suitable soil for its development.
Tian Qingjun, senior vice president of Envision Group, told reporters that in the future, the countryside can not only provide the city with high-quality and low-cost agricultural and sideline products, but also provide green and cheap electricity to the city after installing wind turbines, becoming the center of urban energy supply. Growing crops and "fans", producing both grain and "green electricity", self-sufficiency and surplus electricity to get rich, the villagers have changed from simple energy consumers to energy producers and beneficiaries.
Taking Guangxi as an example, he estimated the rural wind power resources: if the 14,000 villages under its jurisdiction can install 20,000 kilowatts of wind turbines in the most ideal state, the total installed wind power capacity in the rural areas of the whole region will reach 280 million kilowatts, and more than 600 billion kilowatts of green electricity will be produced every year, which is equivalent to the annual power generation of six Three Gorges hydropower stations. "Even if you make a discount, it will be 300 billion kWh, exceeding Guangxi's electricity consumption of 244.94 billion kWh in 2023."
A number of people in the wind power industry told the first financial reporter that whether it is at the economic or technical level, rural wind power is "ready". The technology of low-speed wind turbines is quite mature, and there are also complete solutions to problems such as noise control and blade icing.
Rural wind power is reminiscent of the development logic of distributed photovoltaics in the past. According to the photovoltaic power generation construction in the first quarter of 2024 disclosed by the National Energy Administration, the new grid-connected capacity in the first quarter was 45.74 million kilowatts, including 21.93 million kilowatts of centralized photovoltaic power stations and 23.81 million kilowatts of distributed photovoltaics.
But behind the seemingly positive data lies a series of challenges. In the pilot project of "county-wide promotion" of rooftop distributed photovoltaic projects across the country, many areas have begun to face constraints on the access and consumption of power grids, and many places have suspended the filing for a time. In addition, the competition and regional monopoly of central state-owned enterprises and private enterprises for roof resources, as well as the quality accidents derived, are often criticized by the outside world. These make market participants feel weak about the subsequent growth space of distributed photovoltaics.
A person in the new energy industry told reporters that compared with rooftop photovoltaics, rural wind power not only faces the above problems, but also faces the test of land acquisition and layers of approval. After all, the ownership rights and interests of roofs are relatively clear, and there are no land red lines such as arable land and forest land. Among wind power projects, centralized wind power projects can basically be promoted at the national or provincial level, but rural wind power projects involve many land rights and interests entities and units, and the approval procedures are also more complicated.
In this regard, Qin Haiyan believes that rural wind power has more obvious advantages than distributed photovoltaics, and its higher energy density may be more strongly supported by county and village collectives. For example, he said, if only distributed photovoltaic is installed in a village, then only about 10 million kilowatt-hours of electricity can be generated per year, and the theoretical extreme value is about 20 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. However, rural wind power can contribute 40 to 50 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. In addition to the supply of green electricity, it can also increase the income of village collectives and villagers, and promote employment and the development of tourism, catering and other industries.
In the notice, there is guidance for the investment mechanism of rural wind power: with the village as the unit, explore the formation of a new model of wind power investment and construction of "village-enterprise cooperation" and a new mechanism of "co-construction and sharing" of income distribution.
The first financial reporter learned that a place in Wuzhou, Guangxi, carried out a rural wind power pilot as early as three years ago, through the integration of village collective funds into shares, under the premise of ensuring the basic income of investors, the village collective can be guaranteed dividends of 8% of the income every year. According to CWEA estimates, according to the wind resources in the southern Middle East, one 5 MW wind turbine can share about 50,000 yuan in dividends with the village collective every year.
Despite the promising prospects, industry insiders pointed out that improving the access and absorption capacity of rural power grids is still a "top priority". If grid investment does not keep up, the space for wind power to go to the countryside will be very limited.
"In addition to the traditional upgrading, it is also necessary to break the limit of the on-grid voltage level as soon as possible. At present, distributed wind power can only be connected to the grid at a maximum of 110 kV, and the consumption radius is limited to 20 kilometers under realistic conditions, which is quite a constraint on rural wind power. Only by breaking the voltage level limit can rural wind power go further and send more. Tian Qingjun added.
The large-scale wind turbine accelerates cost reduction and efficiency increase
From centralized to decentralized, the banner of wind power going to the countryside is expected to complete the last piece of the puzzle of onshore wind power. In offshore wind power projects, the lower and lower engineering costs and the continuous iteration of innovation capabilities have also made its economic and technical performance exceed the original expectations of the outside world.
A few days ago, when the first financial reporter arrived at the 300MW capacity expansion project of Zhanjiang Xuwen Offshore Wind Farm of Guangdong Company for two hours, the operating machinery was hoisting the first wind turbine of the project. As a supplementary project to the 600MW project of Zhanjiang Xuwen Offshore Wind Farm, which was put into operation in November 2021, the project will build a total of 25 wind turbines with a single capacity of 12MW and one 220 kV offshore booster station, with a total investment of more than 3 billion yuan.
Walking on the deck of the operation and maintenance ship, the reporter needs to hold on to the side of the ship to barely stand when the waves are strong. Zheng Xinqin, head of Xuwen wind power technology, said that because the seabed under his feet is uneven mountainous terrain, the current speed is rapid and the seabed erosion and silting changes drastically. In addition, the frequent occurrence of thunderstorms and strong typhoons in the local area has resulted in a suitable window period of only about 100 days per year, which poses a severe challenge to the construction and operation and maintenance of the Haifeng project.
But in the face of the capacity increase project launched this year, Zheng Xinqin did not feel panicked. Because in the past two years, the construction team has already carried out technical research and process optimization according to the special terrain and complex sea conditions of the local area, and has made a breakthrough in solving the technical bottleneck of building offshore extra-large wind power generation under the conditions of strong typhoons and thunderstorms. The project pioneered a number of key technologies such as the "hand in hand" of the 220 kV offshore booster station, and the indicators such as the levelness of the single pile flange and electrical energy saving reached the leading level in China in the same period.
A wind power industry researcher told reporters that due to the imperfection of the mainland's offshore wind resources survey and sea area data, it is not easy to carry out a series of work such as wind farm site selection, machine layout and wind turbine selection. In the past, although some projects were included in the development plan, in the actual implementation process, due to the objective complex construction environment and the subjective lack of collaborative innovation ability, it was easy to stagnate. In recent years, under the promotion of policies and the joint research of central and private enterprises, the situation has improved significantly. The sea area that was not optimistic about it is not lacking in representative cases of successful landing.
In the era of offshore wind power parity, although the feed-in tariff per kilowatt-hour in Guangdong Province is only 0.45 yuan, the cost per kilowatt has also dropped significantly, increasing the investment yield of the project. If the overall project is converted into unit cost, the cost of the 300MW capacity expansion project of Zhanjiang Xuwen Offshore Wind Farm is about 11,000 yuan/kW, and the investment return rate of the project can reach more than 10%.
Considerable economy, closely related to the large-scale fan used in the capacity expansion project. The original project used a 6.5MW wind turbine, while the capacity expansion project used a 12MW large-scale wind turbine. Compared with the same installed capacity, the number of large-scale wind turbines will be reduced, and the corresponding sea area, steel structure construction and operation and maintenance costs will be reduced. At the same time, under the same wind speed, the blades are longer, the swept area is larger, and the power generation is also correspondingly increased, which means that the large-scale wind turbine will also increase the utilization hours and increase the effective power generation.
In the past one or two years, due to the continuous innovation of large-scale wind turbines and the obvious advantages of cost reduction, 2023 was once considered the "year of sea breeze", but unfortunately it failed. The reason is that the situation has changed abruptly since the second quarter of last year, and the approval of the Haifeng project has been pressed the "pause button", and the final annual bidding volume and installed capacity are not as expected. Will 2024 deliver on the industry's optimistic expectations?
The first financial reporter noted that since the beginning of this year, not only the sea wind projects of many central state-owned enterprises such as the State Power Investment Corporation have been approved, but also Hainan, Fujian, Shandong and other coastal provinces have successively announced the 2024 sea wind project plans. In April, the domestic offshore wind power tender scale was 1.85GW, which was better than the 1.1GW in the first quarter.
According to a research report released by CITIC Securities at the beginning of this month, the development of domestic offshore wind power is expected to show an inflection point and the economy will rise. The reasons are: first, on the basis of project approval, the bidding scale of domestic offshore wind power projects has gradually increased; Second, the construction of offshore wind power projects has been gradually started, and the project delivery volume has continued to increase; Third, the orders and performance of major equipment manufacturing enterprises have achieved rapid growth.
"Offshore wind power as a whole is still following the 14th Five-Year Plan of various provinces. In the first three years, Haifeng's installed capacity has not yet reached half of the plan, so the next two years are generally believed to be a big year for Haifeng's bidding and construction, and the project reserve is abundant, and we are ready. A person in the sea breeze equipment industry told the first financial reporter.
(This article is from Yicai)