The outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia has disrupted the pace of production of the domestic wind power industry.

　　Since the second half of 2019, there has been a "rush to load" in the wind power industry, which has tightened the market supply. However, by 2020, the epidemic "black swan" makes the fragile industry chain worse.

　　The reporter of China business daily learned that in a typhoon generator set, some parts such as blade core material and main bearing depend on foreign imports. However, the import and export channels are blocked due to the epidemic situation, and the problem of "neck sticking" in the domestic wind power industry chain is becoming more and more obvious.

　　In this case, some wind power equipment production is difficult to deliver as planned, resulting in the downstream wind farms can not be connected to the grid before the specified time node.

　　A person from a wind power enterprise disclosed to reporters that in the first half of this year, many owners have cancelled projects or delayed construction.

　　Difficult blade core material

　　After the shutdown period of domestic epidemic situation, the expectation of wind power enterprises to continue to produce at full capacity failed again.

　　Under the background of supply chain globalization, the control measures implemented by governments in response to the global epidemic have brought uncertainty to China's wind power market, and the first impact is the impact on the wind power supply chain.

　　As a big wind power generation country, China's supply chain management ability is not weak. "However, some key raw materials of parts still need to be imported from abroad, such as blade sandwich materials, IGBT (power and electrical components) and all kinds of bearing parts. At the same time, due to China's huge annual new installed capacity and the special period of rush loading with high market demand, the supply of these components was already very tight before the outbreak of the epidemic. " At an online seminar, Li Xiaoyang, senior research consultant of China's wind power market at wood McKenzie, made such an analysis.

　　"At present, IGBT and bearings need to be imported from Europe. However, in view of the fact that their factory production has not been shut down, as long as the epidemic situation does not worsen further, the government's blockade measures will not be further upgraded. In the short term, these parts will not bring a fatal blow to this year's new installation." Li Xiaoyang thinks, "the situation is not optimistic is the supply of blade core materials."

　　Blade core material is the key material of wind turbine blade. Sandwich structure is generally used to increase the structural stiffness, prevent local instability and improve the load resistance of the whole blade. The most commonly used core materials are Basa light wood, PVC foam and PET. But at present, the supply of these three materials is not optimistic.

　　More than 90% of the world's light wood is from Ecuador, South America. However, Ecuador is one of the most serious countries in COVID-19 in Latin America. Since March 16th, Ecuador has entered a 60 day emergency.

　　Li Xiaoyang said that as far as she knows, about 67% of the light wood transported from Ecuador this year is required by China's wind power market. Due to the control measures taken by Ecuador, the domestic market is expected to be affected for at least 2-4 weeks.

　　Another core of PVC foam is also dependent on overseas markets. Founder Securities Analysis said that the PVC bubble is not equal to PVC. PVC is one of the raw materials of PVC foam. Besides, PVC foam also needs other raw materials such as foaming agent, crosslinking agent and other plastic additives, etc., after being fed, blended, molded, postprocessing and other complex processes.

　　The domestic PVC foam factory is only engaged in post processing. In the original board, there is basically no corresponding manufacturing capability in China.

　　The two main suppliers of PVC foam board are Sweden's platinum DIAB company and Italy Maricell company, while Dai platinum owns a main factory in Italy, so the supply of PVC foam board is highly dependent on Italy. China's PVC foam core suppliers, new foreign materials and CORAS, need to purchase the PVC foam board from Maricell.

　　More importantly, as an alternative material for Basa light wood and PVC foam, PET can supply domestic and abundant materials, but is limited by the production capacity of the production line, and PET is also in short supply. Although the companies have plans to expand production, it is not expected to be realized within this year.

　　The shenjianguo team of Founder Securities pointed out that at present, each blade manufacturer will have a certain amount of core materials in stock, which can be used for 1-2 months. Therefore, the supply of blades in the first half of the year is not expected to have much problem. However, supply in the second half of the year will have to wait for the situation in Ecuador and Italy to improve and the blockade measures to be gradually lifted.

　　The impact of "at sea" is limited

　　In addition to the blade core material, the domestic offshore wind power project is also restricted by the supply of another important component.

　　Senior observers in the wind power industry told reporters, "at present, the supply of main bearings is also a problem."

　　In the wind power bearing, the technical threshold of yaw bearing and pitch bearing is relatively low, and the main bearing, as the core connecting transmission parts of the wind turbine hub and generator, needs to ensure high quality and reliability, so its manufacturing technology is not only high, but also relatively long cycle. In order to reduce the risk, special packaging and a series of anti-corrosion process are needed.

　　At present, the production capacity of domestic wind power bearing enterprises is mainly concentrated in yaw bearing and pitch bearing, and the bearings for wind power equipment below 3MW are mainly used. For spindle bearing and speed increaser bearing, they basically rely on imports.

　　"In fact, domestic enterprises such as tile axle and Luozhou axle can also supply. Because of rush loading, the imported capacity is difficult to meet the demand, and their order volume has increased a lot. However, in offshore wind power projects, especially for the main bearings matching more than 6MW wind turbines, they basically rely on imports, and there is no possibility of domestic bearing replacement in the short term. " The above industry observers told reporters.

　　However, due to SKF, FAG, rotteadler and other first-line bearing brands are located in the European market, with the implementation of European first-class wind power market blockade measures, the supply of domestic main bearings is more tense.

　　Nevertheless, wood McKenzie is optimistic about the prediction of offshore wind power under the epidemic situation. The agency believes that compared with domestic onshore wind power, the impact of the epidemic on offshore wind power installation is limited. On the one hand, the volume of offshore wind power is small; on the other hand, compared with the onshore wind power projects which ended subsidies this year, offshore wind power has a longer rush window.

　　According to Li Xiaoyang's judgment, at present, about 7% of China's offshore wind power installed capacity will be transferred from this year to next year, so China's new offshore wind power installed capacity will reach the peak in 2021.

　　It is worth mentioning that Li Xiaoyang also pointed out that if the supply chain situation is further tense, the offshore wind turbines that were originally expected to be hoisted this year may continue to be postponed. However, in terms of the current hoisting capacity of offshore wind power and the limited installation window of offshore wind power, if the production capacity can not support the new installed capacity in the future, some offshore wind power projects will inevitably be unable to be connected to the grid on time And get the risk of the original plan subsidies.

　　According to the prediction of Zhai endi, chief engineer of Goldwind technology, by the end of 2019, China's offshore wind power projects have been tendered and not constructed, with a total of 21.325 million kilowatts. Even without considering the impact of the epidemic, at least 8 million kilowatts of projects will be carried forward after 2021.

　　Call for extension of grid connection

　　From the documents such as the "notice on improving the wind power grid pricing policy" and "several opinions on promoting the healthy development of non water renewable energy power generation" published previously, the time left for developers to seize the grid connection is not much.

　　According to the above documents, if the onshore wind power projects approved before the end of 2018 are not connected to the grid before the end of 2020, the state will no longer subsidize them; if the onshore wind power projects approved from January 1, 2019 to the end of 2020 and the offshore wind power projects approved before the end of 2018 are not connected to the grid before the end of 2021, they will not enjoy the original approved electricity price.

　　Qin Haiyan, Secretary General of Wind Energy Professional Committee of China Renewable Energy Society, pointed out that due to the shortage of upstream equipment supply, transportation obstruction and delay in the construction of power grid transmission project, the current construction progress of wind farm is far behind expectations. The construction period of onshore wind power project is delayed for at least 6 months, while offshore wind power is more seriously restricted by the construction window period and international supply chain, and the project period is delayed for at least 8 ~ 12 months.

　　In this context, wood McKenzie's forecast for the grid connected capacity of new global wind power in 2020 has been adjusted from 77gw in the fourth quarter of last year to 73gw. Meanwhile, its report shows that so far, the impact of the epidemic on China's new installed capacity has reached 10%.

　　This means that affected by the epidemic, a large number of proposed and under construction wind power projects are difficult to complete within the grid connection time node stipulated by the policy, and cannot obtain the subsidy price when approved. In the case that it is difficult for enterprises to guarantee the original investment income, these projects are bound to be shelved or even cancelled.

　　Prior to this, a staff member of the central wind power enterprise disclosed to reporters that in fact, in the first half of this year, many owners have cancelled projects or delayed construction.

　　However, once the original project is cancelled, the design cost, land acquisition cost, equipment procurement cost and part of the construction cost invested by the developer in the early stage will turn into sunk cost, and all of them will come to nothing.

　　For the project to be started, the situation is more complicated. At this time, most of the developers have completed the bidding procurement of units, and the whole machine enterprises are also preparing to schedule production according to the plan. If the project is cancelled, it will inevitably cause chain reaction in the upstream and downstream industry chain. The disconnection of one link will lead to successive contract breach and a series of economic disputes.

　　Qin Haiyan once said in an article that it is roughly estimated that if enterprises stop the planned and under construction projects that cannot be connected to the grid on time due to the epidemic, the investment in fixed assets of wind farms alone will be reduced by hundreds of billion yuan, and the impact on the industrial chain will be more difficult to estimate.

　　Nian Fangqing, Deputy Secretary General of wind machinery branch of China Association of agricultural machinery industry, said at the seminar on coping strategies of China's wind power industry under the global epidemic situation that all enterprises and associations in the industry hope that the government authorities can adjust the current policies in an extraordinary period: the grid connection time node for land and Shanghai wind power projects under construction and approval to enjoy the subsidy price policy will be appropriately extended In order to ensure that the reasonable income of the established wind power projects is guaranteed and the impact of the epidemic on the industry is minimized, tax reduction and exemption for specific wind power projects, appropriate adjustment or cancellation of part of the grid assessment, etc.

　　"At present, it should be very difficult to implement the policy of delaying grid connection. We still need to arrange the production and construction plan of the enterprise by ourselves. But because of the epidemic, many projects can't be completed. I hope the relevant government departments will consider it again and postpone the grid connection time for half a year, which will not only help to stimulate the economy, but also solve some employment problems. " Qin Haiyan so called.