Since last November, the bidding price for wind turbine generators in China has stayed above 1,400 yuan per kilowatt — a level that the industry generally considers the cost line for most turbines.
“This means that the wind power industry has stopped its price war and broken free from vicious internal competition,” said Qin Haiyan, Secretary General of the Wind Energy Committee of the China Renewable Energy Society.
As of May 2025, the average price of onshore wind turbines excluding towers has risen by 10% from the end of 2024, remaining above 1,600 yuan per kilowatt for more than half a year, marking a price inflection point for the industry, according to Citic Securities. Public information shows that in the past two months, several onshore wind power project bid prices have exceeded 2,000 yuan per kilowatt.
In contrast to the photovoltaic (PV) industry, which is still experiencing losses and price wars, why has wind power, also a major pillar of renewable energy, been the first to emerge from such competition?
Several industry insiders attributed this to four main reasons:
- There are fewer wind power companies compared to PV, with market share relatively concentrated among leading firms, reducing the incentive to expand market share through price wars.
- Wind turbine technology barriers are higher than those for PV modules, and the number of wind turbine manufacturers has been gradually decreasing in recent years, with no new entrants.
- The rapid technological iteration and scaling-up of wind turbines have led to more safety incidents, prompting the industry to shift focus from low-price competition to quality and safety.
- Wind power companies have learned from the previous wave of industry reshuffling: quality and safety are fundamental, and companies that disregard this will inevitably be eliminated.
Around 2010, there were nearly 80 wind turbine manufacturers in China. According to the Wind Energy Committee, by 2024, only 13 manufacturers recorded new installations in the Chinese wind power market, with the top five accounting for 75% of the market and the top ten collectively holding 98.6%.
After the end of the subsidy era, the wind power industry has moved away from policy-driven development and entered a mature market-driven stage.
Self-discipline and Self-Rescue
According to the Wind Energy Committee, after the monthly weighted average price of onshore wind turbines (excluding towers) fell below the historic low of 1,400 yuan per kilowatt in September and October 2024, prices began rebounding from November 2024 onwards. Except for a dip in January 2025 due to the Spring Festival, prices have remained above 1,450 yuan per kilowatt.
Excluding R&D, marketing and sales, management, and indirect costs, the cost of wind turbines below 8 MW ranges from 1,400 to 1,600 yuan per kilowatt; turbines above 8 MW cost about 1,300 yuan per kilowatt. From February to October 2024, the average monthly bidding price for Chinese wind turbines fell below 1,400 yuan per kilowatt six times, breaching the cost line for most companies.
Since November 2024, turbine prices have entered an inflection point, stabilizing and rebounding for over six months. The driving force behind this shift is an industry-wide effort in self-discipline and self-rescue.
On October 16, 2024, the Wind Energy Committee organized 12 wind turbine manufacturers to sign the Self-Discipline Convention for Maintaining a Fair Market Competition Environment in China’s Wind Power Industry. A convention execution management committee and a disciplinary supervision committee were also established. If any wind power company bids below cost, the committee will report it to authorities and pursue legal penalties.
These 12 companies collectively account for over 99% of China’s wind turbine market. Although the Wind Energy Committee is not an administrative body and lacks enforcement power, it is the most influential third-party organization in China’s wind power industry, with strong persuasive power.
In addition to the self-discipline convention, the Wind Energy Committee also facilitated consensus among wind power developers to escape the competitive race to the bottom. On November 15, the committee convened the “2024 Wind Energy Industry Leaders Symposium,” attended by over 40 major leaders from wind power developers and turbine manufacturers.
The symposium reached a key consensus: optimizing bidding plans and evaluation methods, establishing more comprehensive and reasonable evaluation criteria, comprehensively assessing turbine manufacturers’ R&D, manufacturing, and quality assurance capabilities; increasing the weighting of technical scores, refining technical evaluation metrics, and eliminating the practice of awarding bids solely based on the lowest price.
Leading developers played a guiding role. On November 22, 2024, State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC) announced the results of its second annual centralized procurement of onshore wind turbines. The project, with a total capacity of 8.4 GW (7.2 GW procurement capacity plus 1.2 GW reserve), was divided into 30 small tenders. The average turbine price across the 30 segments was 2,092 yuan/kW, with an average minimum bid of 1,882.5 yuan/kW and an average maximum bid of 2,334.5 yuan/kW — notably higher than previous levels.
The price increase was due to SPIC modifying its bid evaluation pricing methodology. Previously, price scores typically accounted for 40%-55% of evaluations, and the lowest bid often became the benchmark, with higher bids penalized proportionally.
This time, SPIC calculated the benchmark price as 5% below the arithmetic average of all valid bids. Bids at or below the benchmark received full marks; bids exceeding the benchmark by up to 5% were deducted 0.4 points per 1% increase, and bids over 5% higher were deducted 0.8 points per 1%. This neutralized the advantage of being the lowest bidder.
This change in bidding rules is seen as a watershed event that shifted the course of the wind power price war. Subsequently, most other developers followed suit in adjusting their bidding rules, and the lowest-price-winning model has gradually phased out over the past six months.
A representative from a leading wind turbine manufacturer said that prices could not fall further — no manufacturer or developer could endure it, and now, the industry has returned to rationality and no longer pursues low prices blindly, with the wind power sector having exited this low-price cycle and is stabilizing and improving.
Following the self-discipline convention, major manufacturers also signed a pledge in March this year to adhere to the agreement. Qin noted that while each company’s specific costs vary and the association cannot impose a uniform price floor, bidding below cost is a legal red line that companies must respect. Self-discipline in the wind power industry is effectively a form of self-rescue.
Accidents and Iteration
The core driver behind the wind power sector’s break from internal competition is the rapid technological iteration of wind products, accompanied by a rising number of safety incidents .
At a closed-door meeting at the end of 2024, a senior executive from a leading turbine manufacturer illustrated how accidents can raise the LCOE over a project’s lifecycle. For a 100 MW project with 20 turbines, assuming an initial investment of 5,100 yuan/kW and 2,300 effective hours of generation, replacing five gearboxes in the tenth year would add 124 yuan per kW to costs; replacing five blades in the fifth year adds 175 yuan per kW; if a turbine collapses in the tenth year, it adds 158 yuan per kW.
This executive said that the industry should return to the essence of wind power technology: reducing LCOE across the lifecycle instead of pursuing cheap turbines.
According to the Wind Energy Committee, major accidents such as turbine collapse, fires, and critical component failures are on the rise — from 95 incidents in 2021, to 114 in 2022, and 130 in 2023. In the same years, China’s newly installed wind power capacities were 47.57 GW, 37.63 GW, and 75.90 GW respectively.
National Energy Administration enforcement cases also show that wind power project violations surged in 2024 compared to prior years. Though large-scale accidents haven’t grown explosively relative to the number of operating turbines, the rise in incidents underscores the need for greater investment in safety.
In the recorded accidents, critical component failures account for 62%, turbine collapses for 18%, and fires for 6%. Among component failures, blades account for 44%, with bolts, towers, gearboxes, and generators also failing from time to time — all of which drive up lifecycle costs.
Normally, a new turbine model undergoes comprehensive testing, small-batch validation, and then mass production — a cycle taking two to three years. But many new models in recent years reached mass production in just six months. These larger, more technically demanding turbines aim for both higher efficiency and lower costs — a difficult balance in such a short time.
Qin noted that to achieve both efficiency and low cost, manufacturers often pursue refined designs that reduce redundancy to lower costs, which necessitates highly precise manufacturing, stringent process control, and meticulous site-specific assessments — otherwise, even slight lapses can lead to quality problems. While refinement is the right direction for technical advancement, the industry must not rush; it requires time for accumulation and improvement.
Today, both developers and manufacturers recognize that the critical point between safety and cost has been reached. To improve safety performance, price wars are no longer tenable.
The Legacy of Reshuffling
Compared to the PV sector, the smaller number of wind power firms and lower inventory levels are legacies of the last industry shakeout.
Between 2008 and 2010, turbine bid prices fell from 6,000 yuan/kW to below 4,000 yuan/kW, and the number of turbine manufacturers ballooned from under ten before 2006 to about 80 by 2010.
In subsequent years, both turbine manufacturers and component suppliers decreased in number, raising market concentration. In 2013, the top five firms accounted for 54.1% of new capacity, rising to 75% by 2018, and by 2024, the top five firms held 75%, and the top ten 98.6%.
The recent price drop was even steeper than in the 2010 period. Average onshore wind bidding prices fell from over 3,000 yuan/kW at the start of 2021 to 1,400 yuan/kW by mid-2024 — a drop of over 50%. Yet hardly any companies went bankrupt during this price decline.
Industry insiders say that companies have learned from this: most wind power firms today maintain minimal inventory.
Qin noted that turbine assembly lines use general-purpose facilities common in engineering equipment, incurring low sunk costs. They typically don’t stockpile raw materials or components. Production capacity is flexible, covering diverse models, so inventory is low. As for component makers, rapid tech iteration has led to a tightly balanced supply of advanced capacity, with only minor overcapacity in outdated facilities. Outside China, the global wind power supply chain remains in short supply.