What restricts the scale development of decentralized wind power

Abstract from Polaris Wind Power Grid

    Technology is not the key to restrict the development of decentralized wind power, and the crux of limiting the development of decentralized wind power is the diversity of application scenarios. Many industry insiders believe that customized design schemes are a key to open the door to the development of decentralized wind power.

    Since the start of 2011, the development of decentralized wind power has been in a lukewarm state for eight years, even if the projects built and connected to the grid are mostly demonstration nature. Compared with the centralized wind power in full swing, what is the problem of decentralized wind power? What is the future of decentralized wind power? What are the sticking points that need to be solved in the future large-scale development of decentralized wind power projects? With these questions, the reporter interviewed industry experts, enterprises, pulse distributed wind power development "wind" direction.

    Distributed wind power is limited by the framework of "low-voltage Internet access, nearby access, and downward consumption", which is a little "awkward", and the piecemeal development mode makes its development state lukewarm, until the National Energy Administration issued the Notice on Accelerating the construction of decentralized access wind power projects in 2017, distributed wind power began to heat up.

    In the context of policy support, local governments have significantly accelerated the pace of developing decentralized wind power development plans, and a red-headed document has been issued, especially this year, there are a lot of decentralized wind power approved projects. In 2019, the total number of decentralized wind power development projects planned by provinces and cities has exceeded 25.1GW. In the past month, Heilongjiang, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Jiangxi have successively approved decentralized wind power projects, of which Jiangxi Province recently issued the first batch of decentralized wind power development and construction plans in 2019, showing 39 construction projects with a total installed capacity of 1240MW.

    Approved projects at the same time, the local also planned their own decentralized wind power development goals, for example, Inner Mongolia plans to build 500MW next year, Guangxi plans to put into production "14th Five-Year Plan" 465MW, Hebei plans to develop 2691MW in 2021-2025.

    Although the national level and local governments are encouraging decentralized wind power, due to many problems such as difficult policy landing, unclear management, and lagging planning, the development of decentralized wind power has shown a status quo of "ideal is full, and reality is very bony".

    In addition, the "Notice on Improving the wind power feed-in Tariff Policy" issued by the National Development and Reform Commission not long ago clarified the onshore wind power feed-in tariff in 2019 and 2020, which means that the newly approved distributed wind power projects this year and next year will usher in two price downfalls, so that the industry is generally cautious about the short-term distributed wind power development.

    Li Jun, vice president of the wind energy Research Institute of Mingyang Smart Energy Group Co., LTD., said in an interview with reporters that last year, decentralized wind power was still a hot topic, and the industry said that it would develop greatly. However, it seems that with the arrival of the era of parity, the wind power industry will have higher requirements for costs, and many large power generation companies are not "cold" for decentralized wind power. Decentralized wind power is difficult to form scale effect in the short term, without scale effect, the cost will remain high. "There is a contradiction between high costs and the coming affordable access to the Internet. Without resolving this contradiction, the development of decentralized wind power will face a big challenge."

    "To some extent, decentralized wind power is a bit ''untimely''. When it first came out, the country issued bidding documents. Less than a year later, the era of parity was approaching, and now wind power installations are occupied by guaranteed electricity prices and rush loading." Sun Shuwei, a technical expert of Vestas Wind Technology (China) Co., Ltd., predicted that "this year and next, decentralized wind power is limited by the pressure of supply and supply chain, and the market is difficult to improve significantly."

    In addition to being influenced by policies, where is the root cause of the decentralized wind power that has not been developed on a large-scale for many years?

    In the view of Wang Qiankun, director of geographic information technology at the Wind Energy Research Institute of Xinjiang Goldwind Technology Co., LTD., the development of decentralized wind power should solve the following four problems: First, where is suitable for the development of decentralized projects? Second, how can a wind tower provide a more accurate assessment of wind resources? Third, how to avoid the noise impact of the project in densely populated areas? Fourth, how to develop decentralized projects in industrial parks?

    "There are many problems in the development of decentralized wind power, and in the final analysis, it is a problem of scheme design." Zhang Wei, vice president of wind Energy Design Institute of Mingyang Smart Energy Group Co., LTD., bluntly said that if the plan is well designed, decentralized wind power will have development opportunities, decentralized wind power will encounter the situation of acclibility like people, and the key is how to design a reasonable plan according to local conditions.

    Zhang Wei believes that technology is not a problem restricting the development of decentralized wind power, and the crux of limiting the development of decentralized wind power is the diversity of application scenarios. For example, centralized wind power with scale support, the entire development cycle can be done for one year, but the entire development cycle of decentralized wind power projects requires 6-9 months; For example, the application environment changes, the centralized wind power development of the largest province - Inner Mongolia per square kilometer density of only 13 people, and distributed wind power development in the southeast of Jiangsu, the density of 725 people per square kilometer, there is a huge difference in the application environment.

    Many industry insiders believe that customized design schemes are a key to open the door to the development of decentralized wind power. Although decentralized wind power is much smaller than centralized wind power, its grid-connection requirements are not much different from centralized wind power. Decentralized wind power is much more challenging than centralized wind power in grid-connection, asset management, equipment monitoring, and operation and maintenance. "So solutions are particularly important. To address these challenges, Goldwind has come up with lightweight solutions that can significantly address the costs of grid-connection, operation and maintenance." Jinfeng Huineng new energy software and data product line general manager Song Jianjun said.

    So, how to crack the distributed wind power development of "thunder, small rain" lingering status quo?

    "Although the decentralized wind power market has not yet started on a large scale, the potential market size cannot be underestimated. "The Chinese market is huge, the demand for wind power is large and urgent, and in the long run, the decentralized wind market is likely to be a blue ocean." Li Junxiang believes that if distributed wind power wants to develop on a large scale, the key is to reduce costs, and after the cost comes down, some small and medium-sized power generation enterprises will be interested in joining the distributed wind power "team".

    It is reported that although the decentralized wind power is small in scale, the power prediction and power control systems required for centralized wind power are indispensable. The investment cost of installing two sets of equipment in a centralized project is about 1 million yuan, and the above two sets of systems are installed in each branch of decentralized wind power, and the cost is naturally higher than that of centralized wind power.

    So, when we make some plans, we simplify the process. For power prediction, we propose to use virtual wind tower to forecast the wind data of distributed wind power in advance." Song Jianjun said, "Before each network has a meteorological model, you can consider removing, all the power forecast results in the central end of the test to the field end, through these two points in the power forecast to meet the requirements of the conditions, so that the investment cost to the minimum."

    In Wang Qiankun''s view, in terms of future technology planning, decentralized wind power should focus on the integration of multiple technical means, integrating geographic information drone technology, 3D modeling technology, WRF meteorological technology, smooth simulation technology, etc., to achieve the real online topography, 3D accurate simulation of wind field, and provide a more comprehensive solution for decentralized wind power evaluation. "Without reducing the evaluation accuracy, it provides a more convenient evaluation method, so that distributed wind power projects can be more accurate, less costly and more profitable."

    "The dynamic nature of the scenario requires that when it comes to decentralised wind power, a package of solutions needs to be in place from the start so that it can be developed smoothly." Zhang Wei believes that when doing the entire distributed wind power product development, one is the product customization development, including the entire fan blade, aerodynamic performance, noise, structural form, etc., to do customized design for the environment; Another grid-friendly development; Decentralized wind farms can adopt multi-point access and centralized operation and maintenance. "The future direction of decentralized wind power development is a diversified energy complementary system that integrates multiple energy sources."

Win Power forward the news for information,not representing approval for some certain opinions in the passage.