Renewable energy experts say that the sudden outbreak of coronavirus has severely disturbed the wind power industry. 

 

Even though the epidemic in China has been successfully suppressed and been under control,  Haiyan Qin, Secretary-General of China Wind Energy Association (CWEA), said that its impact on the wind industry will last for several months or even longer. “So far, manufacturers haven’t recovered from the lock-down,” he said. “Production capacity of spare parts and wind turbines has been drastically dropped and production of WTGs will decrease by about 30%. The scheduled delivery of these items will be for more than 6 months. Because of this delay, grid-connection constructions will have to be postponed. And overall, the wind farm construction schedules will be lagged far behind the expected timeline.” 

 

He said that onshore wind farms will be delayed for at least 6 months and offshore wind farms 8-12 months, caused by the global and domestic supply chain interruption. “ slow down in international trade of raw material and spare parts will limit the production capacity of WTG. Its effect is likely to last until 2nd or even 3rd quarter of this year in China,” he added. “If an approved wind farm project can’t commission on schedule, there will be a fixed asset investment failure which will lead to almost 100 billion yuan loss, or even greater loss, on the whole supply chain. That would eventually cause a heavy blow on the local economy and the job market.”

 

To relieve the side effect of the global epidemic and ensure the stable and long-term development of wind power, industrial experts proposed to the Chinese government to take the following measures:

• For all approved onshore projects, commission deadline of subsidized tariff should be extended with at least 6 months
• For all approved offshore projects, commission deadline of subsidized tariff should be extended with at least 6 months
• Call off the wind power curtailment appraisal of operators in 2020