The wind power industry has not yet taken off

China Huarui Wind Power, which landed on the “A-shares” at “the highest price in history,” has become an unsustainable market. The company fell below the issuance price of 90 yuan per share on the first day of listing on January 13, closing down 9.59%. On the subsequent trading day, Sinovel Wind Power was also exhausted.

The sharp decline of Huarui Wind Power in the capital market has become a microcosm of the industry's “aesthetic fatigue” in the wind power industry. After years of immersive "radical" development, wind power companies suddenly discovered that the market is not yet ready to openly embrace it. Of these, there are bottleneck factors such as the lagging R&D of emerging wind power industry and immature network access technologies. However, the lack of incentive effect of interest-driven mechanisms is the crux of the problem.

Established in 2006, Sinovel Wind Power is a “dark horse” in the field of wind power in China. After being established in less than five years, it won the first place in domestic wind power capacity and third in the world. Under the limelight, Huarui Wind Power resolutely played the slogan of “occupying more than 30% of global wind power equipment market share”. Unfortunately, this flagship company with full confidence and confidence in the industry has suffered heavy losses since its listing. After that, the market's enthusiasm for the wind power industry seems to have been reduced to illusion. In fact, the recent collapse of wind power companies in the capital market is not uncommon: First, Huaneng New Energy postponed its IPO plan on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange due to insufficient subscriptions; followed by Datang New Energy's acquisition of cold, the market's concerns about the wind power industry There is no doubt.

It is undeniable that traditional energy will inevitably be increasingly constrained by environmental resources, and the prospects for emerging energy represented by wind power are boundless. However, the facts show that the bright prospect does not mean that there will be a smooth road ahead. According to statistics, since 2005, China’s total installed capacity of wind power has doubled in five consecutive years. By the end of 2010, China’s accumulated wind power capacity of approximately 41.827 million kW exceeded the US’s number one position in the world for the first time. However, behind these scenery data, the market is "only smelling and not seeing its face" for wind power. China's terrestrial wind energy resources are mainly concentrated in the western and northern regions, while electricity load centers are in the east, and the western and northern power grid systems responsible for supplying wind power are weak. After the wind turbines are installed, they are either not connected to the Internet or due to the small capacity of local power grids. It is difficult to digest new power supply and other phenomena from time to time. Moreover, since wind power is an unstable intermittent energy source, if it is connected to large-scale grids with thermal power, the existing power grid will face great potential risks. The majority of wind power production capacity has not been truly exported, but rather it is a set of data that has attracted people's attention and caused huge waste due to lack of storage technology.

This kind of situation will inevitably cause people to feel regret, and for wind power companies with low localization rates, it is also a test of survival. A business person admits that the price of imported parts of a rectifier bridge for wind power equipment is 800 yuan, while domestically produced parts cost only 80 yuan. If the localization rate of spare parts is difficult to increase rapidly, with the aging of wind power equipment, wind power companies will soon face the dilemma of making ends meet. Furthermore, although wind power is environmentally friendly, wind turbines have a huge investment and high maintenance costs, from the fan blades to the speed reducer to the complete machine. Among them, the fan blades also generate harmful substances during the manufacturing process. If domestic wind turbines are frequently exported to foreign countries due to lack of start-up, they will be equivalent to paying for foreign environmental protection projects at the expense of domestic environmental pollution.

In fact, the technical bottleneck of wind power promotion is only a superficial factor. After all, theoretically speaking, as long as efforts are made, a breakthrough can be made. Moreover, seven wind power machine manufacturers, represented by Sinovel and Goldwind Technologies, have basically possessed the megawatt wind turbine design capabilities and key manufacturing technologies. In view of this, as long as there is sufficient research and development power, it is not an “impossible task” to overcome the high cost of wind power storage and grid connection with domestic technology. The key link that leads to the "surplus wind turbines" is that grid companies still have "inertia." Power grid companies need a lot of investment in wind power access and long-distance transmission, but the level of income is not good, so they lack the enthusiasm for change when they accept wind power. For this reason, the governments of Denmark and other countries have implemented a separate management system for wind power, transmission and power sales. The author is a financial columnist