With an increasingly important role of environmental protection, developing renewable energy represented by wind power has been a global trend, which is also one of China's major policies in promoting an energy revolution. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China will further expand the scale of wind power developed, and optimize the industrial layout. Under the new situation where wind power is changing from "quantity-oriented" to "quality-oriented", taking an assessment of the running quality of wind turbines implies an extreme importance to a healthy development of the industry.
China’s wind power experienced an explosive growth in the “12nd Five-Year Plan”, realizing a cumulative newly added installed capacity at nearly 100 million kilowatts, promoting its energy structure optimization and driving the wind power equipment manufacturers to grow rapidly at the same time. As a rare renewable energy, winder power has lower natural condition requirements than hydropower; moreover, wind power technology has been relatively mature, with relatively low costs in power generation. Hence, it is among the fastest-growing industries of generating power with renewable energies.
According to National Energy Administration, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the layout of wind power will develop in the central and eastern China as well as at sea. In the central, eastern and southern part of China, wind power and offshore wind power will become an important incremental market, particularly crucial in the quality and reliability of wind power equipment. In the next five years, the country must pay attention to the quality of development, with the core task to improve the quality and reliability of the wind power equipment.
Operation and maintenance of wind power helps emergence of a large number of whole machine manufacturers
Air blower’s operation and maintenance services involve remote monitoring, maintenance, operations, asset management and blower maintenance, as well as provision of regular or irregular maintenance. Air blowers require regular maintenance for its various components, including power generators, blades, gearboxes, tower and brakes. In 2014, Europe became a huge market globally for wind power operation and maintenance services. In the near future, the operation and maintenance services market will witness a rapid growth around the world, and the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow the second fastest in the operation and maintenance services. The competition landscape in the air blower’s operation and maintenance services market influences the relationship among the wind power suppliers.
Many technological companies have also increased the investment in the wind power industry, such as Google. These investment companies also contributed to the growth and development of the global wind turbine operation and maintenance market.
Wind power industry market has a bright prospects with an increasingly industrial competition
Shown by CIConsulting Institute of Industry Research’s "2016—2021 China's Wind Power Industry Market Prospects and Investment Strategic Planning Analysis Report", in 2015 China's newly added wind power installed capacity reached 30.5 GW, a year-on-year growth of 31.5% compared with 2014; by the end of 2015. The country’s total installed capacity had been 145 million kilowatts, up 26.5% compared with the end of 2014. The country's wind power generation capacity was 186.3 billion kwh in 2015, accounting for 3.3% of total electricity generated, and the average hours of wind power utilization was 1728, down 172 hours year on year.
It is estimated that by 2030, the cumulative installed capacity of wind power will exceed 400 million kilowatts, reaching 8.4% in terms of the proportion in the national power generation capacity; the proportion in the power source structure will rise to about 15%, playing a growlingly strengthened role in meeting electricity demand, improving energy structure, supporting the national economy and social development.
The industry needs uniform criteria for quality assessment
Under the new situation where wind power is changing from "quantity-oriented" to "quality-oriented", carrying out an assessment of wind turbines’ running quality extensively implies an extreme importance to a healthy development of the industry. However, currently there still exists prominent problems with the assessment of the wind turbines’ running quality, leading to difficulty in making progress in the industry monitoring and assessment work.
Therefore, the industry requires establishing a uniform set of basic evaluation indictors for wind turbines’ running quality, allowing wind power enterprises to cope with to the quality and reliability issues in the same standards.
In the next step, National Energy Administration will mainly take measures as follows from three aspects to establish and improve the industry monitoring and evaluation system to accelerate the industry's survival of the fittest: firstly, building a fair evaluation system. The quality of wind turbines requires evaluations through a fair quality evaluation system; secondly, establishing an equipment quality blacklist system. When an investigation of the equipment quality is made, some major accidents occurring frequently shall be put on the blacklist, and published to the whole society; thirdly, issuing an industry-wide warning for some common and batch issues, based on the evaluation results of the equipment quality, and major and batches of accidents.
Developing renewable energies, with wind power as the representative, represents a global trend, which is also main policies for China to promote energy revolution. During the 13th Five-Year Plan, the country also needs to further increase the development scale of wind power, and optimize the industrial layout.
