Five Major Forecasting Results from MAKE Report Global Wind Turbine O&M 2016

Famous Danish renewable energy research and consulting body MAKE recently released report Global Wind Turbine O&M 2016, whose main topic covers the global operation and maintenance (O&M)market opportunities, service strategies of leading asset owners, availability guarantees, pricing and terms of O&M contracts, and regional installed base segmentations. Recently, one of the report authors, senior consultant from United States team of MAKE, Aaron Barr, accepted an interview and accepted an interview and made a deep analysis about the development situation of global wind power O&M market, especially China O&M market.

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Result one: Global wind turbine operation and maintenance market revenue is expected to exceed $22 billion in 2025

The past ten years is a major development period of global wind power market, more than 460GW of wind power capacity needs to be supported by operation and maintenance services. In order to guarantee the normal operation of a large number of O&M units, wind energy O&M market response positively, emerge out of various types of innovation model that reduce operating expensive, increase energy output, and provide strong technical support.

It is expected that the revenue of global wind turbine operation and maintenance will exceed ＄22 billion in 2025, which means that next ten years will grow by 10%.

Result two: wind turbine owners upgrade the O&M to a strategic height, ISP becomes flexible choice

Both wind turbine manufacturers and owners take the wind turbine O&M market as the key factors to enhance the competitive position, accelerate reduce the cost and improve operation mode. Recently, the industry will further integrate, the industry competition will be much more sharp, global wind power capacity continues to grow, at the same time, the wind turbine excellent operating state has increasingly become the focus of the industry.

Regularly check and maintenance mode has changed, new wind turbine O&M servicers will emerge globally. Numerous wind power owners have decided to use their own team for the wind turbine operation and maintenance, but wind turbine operation and maintenance price of the third party operation and maintenance service provider (ISP) and the wind turbine manufacturer's is lower. Diversified business model gradually rise, including wind power owners to set up third party operation and maintenance services company, wind turbine manufacturers provide O&M service for the their competitors.

Global wind turbine manufacturers are beginning to realize that the operation and maintenance market will develop strongly, and are eagerly seeking to sign the quality assurance service agreement. In this process, depending on their unique competitive advantages, such as advanced wind turbine technique, exclusive optimization and upgrade services, and adequate spare parts supply, whole wind turbine unite owners will become a selling point for self promotion.

ISP is an other choice of wind turbine O&M, the services mode is more comprehensive, including fixed check and maintenance, and maintenance for specific items, which will be an ideal choice for wind turbine owners who requires flexible, cost-effectiveness, and reliable wind turbine O&M service.

Functional correction and repair has become a hot topic in the industry, all wind turbine owners want to seek ways to identify or mitigate major incidents. Maintenance operations are constantly improving, which can reduce part of O&M cost on the wind turbine tower, effectively reduce dispatch cost of crane. Optimization and upgrading services continue to emerge, component upgrades and participation of the wind turbine manufacturers contribute to the optimization of the wind turbine, increase production capacity, reduce fault.

Result three: there is still a lot of business opportunities in O&M market – “left wind turbine” is the key

There is still a lot of business opportunities in O&M market，in particular, service type with insufficient service level. Industry consolidation is more extensive, at the same time, “left wind turbine” (refers to the machine whose manufacturer has to withdraw from the wind turbine market) can be a starting point of business opportunities, which can provide full use for interested ISP. Despite the risks and restrictions, wind turbine manufacturers are still assessing the feasibility of providing operation and maintenance services for other brands of wind turbine.

Result four: The economies scale has formed in Three-Northern Regions O&M market of China

In the past ten years, Three-Northern Regions in china, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang have increased a large number of wind power capacity, naturally formed the economy scale of the wind turbine operation and maintenance market. But these wind farms are in remote areas, causing great challenges for the supply of spare parts, use of crane and technical personnel services. Service life of most wind turbines are now five years more than required service life, reliability problems have appeared, which are related to the design defects and manufacturing problems left in the early rapid development period of domestic supply chain. Under this market background, main wind turbine owners are gradually developing self operation team to meet the operation and maintenance requirements of the wind farm in remote area, at the same time, may also take this opportunity to provide maintenance services for other owners of the wind farm in the region, following the business model of the leading wind power owners in the United states.

There are more O&M servicer for wind turbine owners in cities and provinces with convenient transportation and more population, such as Shandong, Hebei, Liaoning and Jiangsu.

Result five: China will become one of the world's largest operation and maintenance market in the next ten years

China will become one of the world's largest operation and maintenance market in the next ten years, operation and maintenance revenue is expected to increase from $1 billion 500 million to nearly $8 billion in 2025. Large component failures will be the main component of the expected revenue. Over the past ten years, the hoisting of the gear box and the blade began to appear fatigue or loss situation. Manufacturing problems and potential design flaws related with earlier domestic supply chain development will provide a larger space for the replacement of parts and sources of income. Other parts of the operation and maintenance value chain in China are not as good as in other regional markets, including remote monitoring, technical support and optimization and upgrading, etc. Domestic operation and maintenance revenue will be closely related to that owners committed to reduce downtime, even if the failure of majority of major parts, they do not immediately to repair.

In the acceptance of MAKE research, wind power owners, ISP and wind turbine manufacturers are put forward a high impact on the operation principle, price level, standard regulations and other potential drivers of wind turbine operation and maintenance market.

TICO wind turbine crane will certainly seize the important opportunities for development.

Through this report we are not difficult to find, China's wind turbine operation and maintenance market has great potential, which will drive the further development of the wind turbine crane. TICO wind turbine crane is cost-efficient, easy to operate, we believe that our wind turbine crane will contribute to the development of China's wind turbine operation and maintenance market!