In the TV series "Bright Sword", Li Yunlong once said that "Laozi fights are elite." This sentence is more appropriate for wind power bearings.

The wind power industry in China has experienced more than ten years of development and has made great progress. Whether it is upstream raw materials, midstream wind power components, or downstream machine and wind farm operations, China is breaking the encirclement of European and American countries bit by bit, writing a strong brush for the development of wind power, and continue to strengthen the ability to export.

In the middle of the parts, wind power bearings because of its unparalleled importance (accuracy and stability play a crucial role in the life of wind turbines), the speed of domestic replacement temporarily lags behind cast and forging parts, blades and other brothers, domestic players and overseas giants compared, there is still room to catch up.

Introduction of wind power industry chain

In order to make up for this last short board, industry players are grasping the nettle. Today I will take you to take a look at this subdivision track.

First, under the trend of large-scale, bearing manufacturing can be too difficult

First of all, in the context of the global energy transition, the downstream installation prospects of the wind power industry are undoubtedly quite worth looking forward to, here I will not repeat. Only quantitative data is given: During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China's average annual new installed capacity of wind power will be expected to exceed 45GW, including offshore and onshore wind power.

This is definitely an incremental cake, with three words inside and nowhere near the track.

Looking at wind turbines, large-scale has become the only way to reduce the cost of power generation. Consulting the forecast given by the International Energy Agency, by 2030, the power of the fan will be very promising to achieve 20MW. By then, if you can stand on the top of the blade, you will basically be equal to the Eiffel Tower in France.

Average single wind turbine power change (Wind Energy Association)

The large power of wind power will inevitably drive the size of wind power bearings to increase. In this way, the processing difficulty of wind power bearings will also be doubled, which puts more stringent requirements on the research and development and production capacity of enterprises. How strict is it? (Dig a pit here and fill it later)

For those who are not familiar with wind power bearings, bearings are joints of mechanical equipment, and wind power bearings are one of the parts used to connect the yaw, transmission and other systems in the unit, which can generally be divided into main shaft bearings (1-3 sets), yaw bearings (1 set), variable pitch bearings (3 sets).

Among them, the main shaft bearing, as the name suggests, is used to support the main shaft, and the theoretical life can be up to 20 years (but the bearing often has lubrication problems). Yaw bearings are used to connect the engine room and the tower barrel, which can track changes in wind direction and improve power generation efficiency. The variable pitch bearing connects the blade to the hub, thereby changing the Angle of the blade. Of course, if it is all about double-fed wind turbines (a type of unit) and gearbox bearings, etc., it will not be discussed here.

Wind power bearing classification (Zhiyan Consulting)

Second, we take the road of encircling cities from the countryside

In order to break the siege of the enemy, we chose a way of encircling the city from the countryside. Start with the easy ones and work your way in.

Due to the relatively simple production process of yaw and variable pitch bearings, domestic players have achieved breakthroughs in these two fields, new strong union (300850), tile shaft, etc., has basically achieved import substitution, so we will also focus on the main shaft bearing.

Combing the overall competitive pattern of wind power spindle bearings, you will find that although the cost of this cake only accounts for about 5% of the cost of the fan, it is still mainly controlled by traditional powers such as Germany, Sweden and Japan. Our new Qianglian, Luo Axis and other players share less than 10% of the market.

Main shaft Bearing Market Share (2020)

Policy must come first. In 2006, the temple introduced the "wind power equipment localization rate of 70%" policy provisions (but later cancelled). In the face of powerful European and Japanese enemies, how do domestic players currently exert force on the main shaft bearing?

Foreign players Profile (Company official website)

Taking the 3MW unit as an example, the first tier of domestic players, the new strong alliance has been able to achieve mass production, such as onshore wind power player Mingyang Intelligent (601615) of the 1,000 shipped each year, more than 80% of the main shaft bearings are from the new strong alliance, the delivery time is generally about half a year. Goldwind Technology (002202), Dongfang Electric (600875) and Shanghai Electric (601727) also have cooperative relations with Xinqianglian. Tile axis (200706), the progress of the axis is slightly slower, but they also began to supply small quantities. Moreover, it is said that Vision Energy continues to output spindle bearing technology on the shaft, and is determined to make its little brother thrive.

As mentioned earlier, the upsizing of units is the general trend of the future. When the power is greater than 5MW, the bearing processing is more difficult, and only the new strong alliance has achieved small batch production, and other local players still belong to the stage of crossing the river by feeling the stones on this road. The gap between the two seems to be widening now, the Matthew effect is obvious.

It is important to add here that it generally takes at least three years for small batch to mass production, as this also includes the customer's verification process on the stability of the product. Therefore, we still have a long way to go in the domestic replacement of high-power spindle bearings. Just mentioned overseas traditional strong, but also based on this industry experience, only have the courage not to reduce prices.

Main shaft bearing price (Star Wealth self-made)

This courage is not given by Liang Jingru, but by product design and application experience.

In the future, according to institutional forecasts, the scale of the wind power bearing market will exceed 10 billion yuan (10.6 billion) in three years, and the industry has broad room for growth.

The stage has been set up, the domestic local players can stage a good play, worth looking forward to. At least I have enough faith in the head player. Because the harder it is to break through, the higher the moat, and once crossed, the Matthew effect will be more obvious.