Financial Services Association, Feb. 4 (Reporter Xiao Lianghua) On February 3, Xinhua News Agency was authorized to issue the “Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Studying and Using the Experience of the “Thousand Villages Demonstration, Ten Thousand Villages Remediation” project to effectively promote comprehensive rural revitalization, proposing to promote rural power grid consolidation and upgrading projects. Promote the development of distributed new energy sources in rural areas and strengthen the planning and construction of NEV charging and switching facilities in key villages and towns.

A Financial Services Association reporter combed through and found that since 2018, the Central Committee Document No. 1 has been a programmatic document to guide the work of the “three rural areas” every year. When deploying rural infrastructure construction work, they have clearly proposed “promoting the development and utilization of rural renewable energy,” “fully implementing rural electrification upgrading projects,” and “implementing rural clean energy construction projects.” This year's Document No. 1 mentioned “promoting rural power grid consolidation and upgrading projects” for the first time.

The upgrading of rural power grids is a prerequisite for the development of decentralized wind power. A CIFA reporter learned in an interview that at present, distributed photovoltaics already supports half of the industry, and decentralized wind power is still in its infancy. “Local governments are paying more and more attention to decentralized wind power, but for power grids in many rural areas, consumption is a problem.” The head of a leading wind power company told the Financial Federation reporter that developing decentralized wind power in these regions “requires a power grid revolution.”

Decentralized wind power has huge space

Decentralized energy is divided into distributed photovoltaics and decentralized wind power. In recent years, the cumulative installed capacity of distributed photovoltaics in China has shown a rapid growth trend. Data show that in 2022, the cumulative installed capacity of distributed photovoltaics in China reached 157.62 GW, accounting for 40.21% of the total installed photovoltaic capacity; by the end of September 2023, the cumulative installed capacity of distributed photovoltaics nationwide was 225.26 GW, accounting for 43.29% of the total installed capacity of photovoltaics. Analysts from the China Business Industry Research Institute predict that the cumulative installed capacity of distributed photovoltaics in China will reach 315.24 GW in 2023 and 418.76 GW in 2024.

In comparison, decentralized wind power accounts for almost negligible share of total wind power installations. According to CWEA statistics, by the end of 2022, China's decentralized wind power had a cumulative installed capacity of 13.44 million kilowatts.

According to the “Report on the Transformation and Development of Green and Low-Carbon Energy in China's Counties”, the current state of energy development in China's counties is rich in energy resources, but the utilization rate is low. Rural areas are rich in energy resources, and decentralized wind power technology can develop 250GW of potential.

Looking at market space, Qin Haiyan, Secretary General of the Wind Energy Professional Committee of the China Renewable Energy Society, said that currently, there are about 690,000 administrative villages in the country. If there are 100,000 administrative villages, each village finds 200 square meters of scattered land such as fields, front and back of villages, country roads, etc., to install 2 5MW wind turbines, the country can achieve 1 billion KW of wind power installations.

A wind power researcher at a brokerage firm told the Financial Federation reporter that barriers such as the small scale of the project, insufficient investment and output appeal, and the approval process as complicated as large projects are the main factors affecting the development of decentralized wind power.

However, in recent years, the policy on decentralized wind power has been increased frequently, and the industry is expected to usher in a turning point. In 2021, the “Thousand Villages and Thousand Villages Wind Management Plan” opened up market space for decentralized wind power; in 2022, favorable policies such as “Implementation Opinions on Deepening the Reform and Optimizing the Business Environment in the Energy Sector” and “Implementation Opinions on Accelerating Rural Energy Transformation and Development to Help Rural Revitalization” were introduced frequently, continuously raising the momentum for industry development.

In April 2023, before Document No. 1 of this year was issued, the National Energy Administration issued the “2023 Energy Work Guiding Opinions”, which clearly and vigorously promoted the construction of onshore decentralized wind power.

Relevant listed companies actively lay out

With policy support, decentralized wind power will usher in broader development prospects. Although the overall scale of decentralized wind power is currently small, relevant listed companies still pay more attention to it.

Goldwind Technology (002202.SZ) has stated that with broad application prospects in rural areas, new wind power infrastructure may become an important direction for future fan development. As innovative decentralized wind power technology continues to be applied, local governments are bound to be more and more accepting of it.

According to industry statistics, in 2022, in the decentralized wind power market, Goldwind Technology ranked first with a bid rate of over 30%, and ranked among the top in winning bids in Hubei, Hunan, Anhui and other provinces.

The relevant person in charge of Goldwind Technology told the Financial Federation reporter that currently decentralized wind power is basically the same as centralized procedures, and the pace of promotion is also quite different from province to province.

Yunda Co., Ltd. (300772.SZ) announced in August last year that the company plans to invest in the construction of Yucheng Yunda Phase II 36MW decentralized wind farm project with Yucheng Qida Company as the main body, with a total investment of about 310 million yuan.

The company stated on an interactive platform in November 2023 that decentralized wind power is an important part of the wind power market. Wind power in rural areas provides incremental market and policy support for the development of decentralized wind power. The company attaches great importance to the decentralized wind power market and will continue to pay attention to this market and seek projects in the future.

Decentralized wind power products require customization. Mingyang Intelligence (601615.SH) has strong flexible production capacity and is involved in customization earlier. Complete machine products can match the different needs of decentralized wind power projects.

The fan industry insiders mentioned above believe that decentralized wind power is expected to receive stronger policy support, that it is expected to develop on a large scale and open up space for wind power growth in the future, and leading companies in the industry with rich product lines are expected to benefit.