Category: Blogs

All over the world, politicians see the opportunity for job growth in the renewable energy business. For example here in the US, the economy and job creation is one of the key themes in the ongoing primaries and the upcoming presidential election.

The wind and solar power industries offer opportunities to create more good-paying jobs for the local manufacturing industry, particularly as in the past these type of jobs have largely moved to low-cost countries with inexpensive labor, such as China, India, Vietnam and others. In many cases, the job creation opportunity is of higher political interest than concerns about global warming or even the western world’s heavy dependence on imported oil.

What counts is the total cost, not purchase cost. This was one of the main themes that was identified at the international IQPC Wind Turbine Supply Chain management conference in August in Germany. Speaking about The Switch agility to meet market demand fluctuations at the conference, Simon Hewitt, Global Sourcing Manager at The Switch, discussed demands for greater manufacturing flexibility, an effective risk management strategy and ways to adapt the wind turbine supply chain to demand fluctuations.

The growing global demand of rare earth metals combined with China’s ever-tightening grip on the material keep pushing up the magnet prices. While we at The Switch don’t think that the price trend can last for too long, we understand that the matter is of great concern for the wind power industry. To tackle with this alarming situation and to meet future needs, the industry needs to change its perspective to open up to new opportunities.

The Switch has done intense research and development to reduce the amount of magnets needed for the production of permanent magnet generators. Based on the successful testing of 20 different machine types, we are in a unique position to make third generation permanent magnet machines. By combining our extensive field experience with our state-of-the-art design methods, not only do we have the skills to produce classical machines but we can also bring new innovation to the permanent magnet generators field.

Attention: Chinese wind power manufacturers! We know that you are eyeing the West. Speaking last week to a house full of Chinese business and trade journalists at The Switch media business luncheon in Beijing, Celia Sun from MAKE consulting company listed a few approaches and risks you may want to consider when entering new markets.

According to MAKE’s Chief Representative in China, regulatory and technical barriers in mature markets may become a hindrance to the overseas business development plans of Chinese companies. To a large extent, this is true. However, as we at The Switch know very well, some of the Chinese wind turbines are already ‘powered by’ Western technologies, such as The Switch’s permanent-magnet generators and full-power converters.

In 2010, China’s speed in wind power development was probably one of the most discussed topics in the global wind power industry. Based in Beijing and looking at the development from this part of the world, I have made a couple of observations about the Chinese market trends in 2011. One thing is clear. While China continues to focus on building its own renewable energy infrastructure and establishing Beijing’s ambitious wind power capacity goals, the Chinese wind power industry has definitely started to gear up and they are eyeing West.

China announced last week that it would restrict its rare earth export quota and the news came unwelcome for the Western renewable energy industry. In Beijing, a representative of a Chinese Ministry of Commerce think tank commented: “Foreign nations do not make sense when they blame China for reducing exports. Some of them can produce rare earth themselves. Nations that own rare earth resources should take the responsibility of producing and help supply global demand.”

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