According to research firm Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, the potential size of China’s offshore wind market will give domestic manufacturers the opportunity to lead global offshore wind order rankings in years to come.
Specifically, with China expected to install around 40 GW in the next 10 years — only 11 GW less than what is expected to be installed across the whole of Europe — Chinese original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, will almost unwittingly be providing enough capacity to beat out their global rivals.
However, and there are two significant impediments to global offshore wind domination. The first is that “Chinese manufacturers will be pretty much restricted to the Chinese market for the foreseeable future.”
More importantly, however, is the simple fact that Chinese OEMs are currently under-competing in terms of technological development, specifically when it comes to turbine capacity size.
Chinese manufacturers have yet to achieve the capacity size being launched by their European rivals.
For example, China’s Goldwind — which is one of the world’s top five global offshore wind OEMs — has only recently begun touting turbines in the 6 GW range.
Compare this to GE Renewable Energy’s 12 MW Haliade-X behemoth or MHI Vestas’ 10 MW turbine which is built on the back of successive largest-ever offshore turbine models.
Being unable to compete in terms of turbine size will be the big hindrance to China’s OEMs if they want to look further afield to expand their market share.
Reference- Clean Technica, Goldwind website