Chinese turbine makers keep squeezing Western rivals with record global sales
Goldwind remained top of Chinese rankings overall and also topped offshore wind order intake in country for the first time, while Windey leapfrogged rivals in jump up to second
Chinese turbine makers led by Envision secured a record-breaking international order intake last year, says Wood Mackenzie, as they continue to assert pressure on Western wind giants including Vestas and Siemens Gamesa.
Chinese OEMs raked in 26.7GW of overseas orders across 33 markets last year, according to new figures from consultancy WoodMac. Envision accounted for 39% of those orders.
Overall, Chinese turbine makers’ order intake hit 180GW last year, a new record for the market and 83% up year-on-year, said WoodMac in its 2024 analysis of the country’s wind OEMs.
WoodMac said developers were “busy with wind turbine procurement activities” to ensure they met targets for China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, which runs from 2021 through 2025.
Developers are “starting to prefer wind assets over solar in future project investments due to better profitability in marketised power trading,” said WoodMac.
Goldwind continued to top the domestic rankings, with 16.7% of the total, and also took first spot in offshore wind for the first time with 3.6GW of orders.
Windey pushed its way up to second overall, with 15.6% of orders, up from fourth place last year. It also stormed its way up to first position onshore by doubling its annual order volume in 2024.
Mingyang came in third place, with a 14.6% market share, while Envision dropped to fourth on 12.7%, 4.7% down year-on-year. Sany came in fifth on 11.7%.
Onshore wind accounted for 94% of orders, with the Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang regions making up almost half of that. The offshore wind market meanwhile rebounded by 53% year-on-year to 11.6GW in order intake.
Red hot price competition between OEMs has meanwhile “eased,” said WoodMac, although annual average onshore turbine costs still came down by 10% due to the wide deployment of larger turbines.
10MW onshore turbine models received 41.6GW of orders, a 12x increase year-on-year, said WoodMac. “Surging installation expectations in 2025 may lead to a temporary supply shortage of some key wind turbine components,” it warned.
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