Domestic firms win all 6GW of China's first subsidy-free site

State-owned energy firm State Power Investment Corporation (Spic) awarded the full 6GW of subsidy-free capacity to local suppliers, leaving out western OEMs entirely.

by David Weston 3 April 2019

Goldwind will supply 1.3GW for the 6GW project in Inner Mongolia

The CNY 46.54 billion ($6.92 billion) Ulanqab Wind Power Base is set to be the largest onshore wind project when it is completed in 2023. 

Shanghai Electric was awarded the largest slice of the project, being contracted to supply 1.4GW of turbines. Goldwind won 1.3GW, as did Ming Yang.

Dongfang will supply 1.1GW to the site, having installed less than 500MW in total in 2018. CSIC Haizhuang will provide the final 900MW. 

Speaking at WindEurope's 2019 conference in Bilbao, Spain, Haiyan Qin, secretary general of the Chinese Wind Energy Association (CWEA), said the fact the project is subsidy free — China's first — means the developer was concious of equipment costs. 

Western OEMs Vestas, GE Renewable Energy and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE) were expected to have bid for a slice the project but missed out.

Meanwhile, the second largest Chinese OEM in 2018, Envision, was also missing from the final results. 

Spic received planning approval for the subsidy-free project at the end of 2018. It will spread across a 3,800km2 area in Inner Mongolia, northern China.

Roughly 18.9TWh a year could be injected into the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei power market.