©Getty Turning circles: wind power production in Xinjiang province, western China Dabancheng wind farm’s location in a natural wind tunnel in China’s Xinjiang province makes it one of the best situated in the world. It is also a showcase for the turbine manufacturer Goldwind, which became the largest supplier in the world after installing so much turbine capacity in 2015 that it overtook Vestas of Denmark. Wu Gang, Goldwind’s founder and chairman, sweeps his hands gracefully to show how the wind courses through the narrow corridor between the Junggar basin and the Taklamakan desert, where Marco Polo wrote of hearing the voice of a genie calling from the whirlwinds. More On this story IN Tomorrow’s Global Business Today more than 300 towers rise from the dusty desert floor, churned by that constant wind. Dabancheng is an engineer’s heaven, studded with prototypes of nearly every generation of turbine technology, both Chinese-made and foreign. “I joke when I’m in Europe — I tell young people who want to know the history of European windpower technology to come to Dabancheng,” Mr Wu says. Whether or not those young enthusiasts make the trip, Goldwind is coming to them. Last year, China accounted for half the world’s wind power installation. It now has a third of the world’s total wind power generation capacity. Goldwind is not the only company on the rise: five of the top 10 wind turbine manufacturers are Chinese according to FTI Consulting, a business advisory firm. Many cut their teeth in a protected market, after local rules effectively locked many foreign turbine manufacturers out of the Chinese market. Saturation in the domestic market now means that Goldwind and its fellow Chinese producers are looking to compete overseas. Pressure from Chinese exports is already fuelling a round of consolidation among established European players. Siemens of Germany, for example, is in talks to buy Spanish turbine maker Gamesa. At home in Xinjiang province, Goldwind’s home market, wind power capacity doubled in 2015, reaching 26 per cent of the region’s total power generation capacity. However, a bottleneck in transmission lines out of the region means that almost half its installed wind power went unused in the first quarter of 2016. “Xinjiang is pretty much maxed out in terms of installed wind capacity,” says Sebastian Meyer, research director for renewable energy consultancy Azure International. To maintain its position as the world’s largest wind turbine supplier Goldwind will have to increase sales in other Chinese provinces, notorious for their local protectionism, where it will also have to compete directly with its domestic rivals Guodian, Ming Yang and CSIC. Meanwhile curtailment — the amount of installed wind power capacity not being used by the grid — is rising, as provinces race to meet Beijing’s renewable energy targets. Mr Wu remembers the 1980s as an era of international wind power co-operation. He became fascinated by the potential for wind power while working on an experimental project in Xinjiang funded by the Dutch government. That experimental farm is now Dabancheng. You need JavaScript active on your browser in order to see this video. He is quick to point out that being big in China does not necessarily translate into strength overseas. “We are number one in the world in terms of market share, but we are well aware that we still lag behind multinationals like Siemens, GE and Vestas,” he says. “Take Vestas. Their products are sold in more than 30 countries. Ours are only sold in 17 countries. This is a gap. As a Chinese company, we lag far behind our foreign competitors in internationalisation.” But Goldwind is catching up. It hires local sales and installation teams overseas and also finances wind farms to sell to power producers after they are up and running. Listed in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, the company has powerful backers, including state-owned dam builder China Three Gorges Corp and insurer Anbang Group, which has made a string of aggressive acquisitions over the past year. Most of Goldwind’s technology is licensed from Germany’s Vensys, although Goldwind has made alterations to the original designs. Xinjiang is pretty much maxed out in terms of installed wind capacity, – Sebastian Meyer Mr Wu says Goldwind’s real competitor is not other wind power producers but coal. Currently, wind power generation in the north of China (home to strong and regular winds) costs slightly less than thermal power generation in the south, where coal is more expensive and emissions standards are stricter. However, coal is cheapest in Xinjiang and northern China, leaving wind power at a disadvantage in its most favourable region. Further technological improvements and increased economies of scale could help to narrow the gap, Mr Wu believes. “Our competitors are not the foreign companies,” he says, citing UN goals that non-fossil energy should represent 85 per cent of primary energy consumption globally by 2050. “Thermal power is competing with us. The competition between wind and fossil energy is far greater than the competition within the wind industry.” Additional reporting by Luna Lin Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. Source link

One in five plumbers struggles with late payments Published:  14 July, 2016 One in five plumbers struggles to pay for their supplies after late payments from customers impacts their cashflow, according to a survey by ECIC The Healthcheck survey, carried out annually by construction industry insurer ECIC during the first quarter of 2016, found that late payments are having a potentially serious impact on plumbers. The results shows that late payment is an issue for 62% of plumbers, compared to a construction industry average of 41%, while close to a fifth said the problem was so bad that they struggled themselves to pay for supplies. Almost a quarter said they have to fund a specific resource just to chase outstanding payments. However, reflecting the high demands on skilled contractors, firms are taking control of the issue where they can, with half of the plumbers surveyed saying they would turn work away from known late payers. John Flaherty, business development executive for ECIC, said: “It’s shocking that despite government promises of support, late payment is still such an issue for the nation’s hard-working plumbers. This can have a serious knock-on effect for their business, delaying projects and damaging customer relationships. “The good news is that where they can, plumbers are being selective about who they will work with, based on the customer’s previous payment performance. By taking a firm stand in this way, it sends a clear message that late payment won’t be tolerated.” The findings of the survey follow the introduction of the Enterprise Act in May bringing changes to the speed of commercial insurance claims payments. Mr Flaherty added: “As part of the Enterprise Act introduced in May, unnecessary delays in claims payments should be a thing of the past, giving plumbers some much needed certainty when they need to make a claim. It always helps to work with an insurer or broker who knows your business sector inside out and has a proven track record for claims. Biggest is not always best and we would urge contractors and tradespeople to seek evidence of claims service before placing cover.”   Source link

National Grid is preparing for a 400MW spike in demand on Saturday (13 August) as people tune in to watch Olympic athletes compete for gold medals. The higher-than-usual demand is expected as people stay up until 3am on ‘Super Saturday’ to watch Jessica Ennis-Hill, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford compete. The prediction is lower than the 2012 Olympics in London, which National Grid attributes to the time difference in Rio. A ‘TV pickup’ is an increase in demand seen during advert breaks or at the end of popular programmes as consumers switch on electrical appliances and lights. Grid is expecting a pickup of 500MW during the tennis event, if Andy Murray makes it to the final at around 8pm. If the women’s gymnastics team reach the final round, Grid said it predicts a 250MW spike. Britain saw another pickup of around 169MW when Tom Daley won a bronze medal on Tuesday night, but this is much less than the predicted 350MW. A further increase of 50MW was seen when the coverage switched to gymnastics. National Grid energy forecasting manager Jeremy Caplin said: “The pickups during this Olympics so far have been lower than London 2012 which is probably due to the time difference as most of the events happen overnight. “As always our team of experts in the control room are working hard to ensure our predictions are as accurate as possible and we are expecting to see an increase in demand of 200MW overnight during ‘Super Saturday’ as people tune in to watch stars such as Jessica Ennis-Hill and Mo Farah.” Source link

Following a new report on future energy provision by the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change (ECC) Committee, the Electrical Contractors’ Association (ECA) has voiced its full support for the report’s recommendation to boost the UK’s energy storage capacity and demand side response.   Entitled ‘the energy revolution and future challenges for UK energy and climate change policy’, the report makes a series of recommendations, including the need for the government to: · redesign the energy Capacity Market—the subsidy scheme designed to minimise the risk of blackouts—to incentivise innovative energy storage and demand side response (DSR) technologies; · move quickly to address other regulatory barriers faced by energy storage; and · set out a high-level public commitment to making the UK a world-leader in storage, with a storage procurement target for 2020. (The last two energy capacity market auctions failed to deliver any energy storage.) ECA director of business services Paul Reeve said: “We have now reached the stage where the UK energy challenge is far less about how to produce ‘low to no carbon’ electrical energy, and much more about how to distribute, store and use it. “This authoritative report is aimed squarely at meeting these new challenges, and opportunities, and we greatly welcome the Committee’s recommendations.” According to ECC committee chair Angus MacNeil MP: “The government must…encourage the energy market to embrace ‘smart’ technology solutions, such as energy storage and demand-side response. There is an incredible opportunity for the UK to become a world leader in these disruptive technologies. Yet our current energy security subsidies (still) favour dirty diesel generation over smart and clean tech solutions.” The report also notes that “if current regulatory barriers to (energy) storage were removed, some £7bn per annum of savings to consumers could be achieved”.  The report will be the final activity from the ECC Committee, with its responsibilities set to be taken over by a new Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.     Source link