At the end of 2010, ABB’s global wind energy business division made a decision to relocate the company's global headquarters for wind energy from Denmark to Beijing, China, in order to be closer to the world's largest wind energy market. This was undoubtedly a wise decision at the time. In the past few years, the wind power industry developed speeding in China. At the end of 2010, it became the world’s largest installed wind turbine and ranked second in the world in terms of installed capacity.

However, after ABB’s global wind energy business unit was officially relocated to Beijing, China’s wind power industry suffered a severe winter after many years of rapid development due to a series of wind turbine off-grid incidents. The development trend of rapid development has abruptly slowed down in 2011. . The turning point may also be unexpected by ABB's global wind energy business unit. A year after moving to China, Alfredo Parres, head of ABB's global wind energy business, made the first exchange with the Chinese media. At this point, Barrett has already managed his ideas from the numerous affairs.

“In 2010, ABB's wind power business in China grew by 41%. Considering that the wind power market in China has been developing steadily or even slightly declining in 2011, our business is not likely to grow as fast as last year,” said Barris. But he is not so pessimistic. According to Breis, the biggest challenge for the Chinese wind power market is how to send the electricity to the grid. On-grid and transmission are the business areas that ABB is good at.

We are optimistic that China's grid-connected market will move its global wind energy business headquarters to China. Sounds like this is a large-scale job, but in reality, this relocation has not been so difficult to implement. Because this wind energy business team does not actually include sales and R&D departments.

“ABB's global wind energy business department is more of a leader. We judge the direction of investment by judging the direction of the market, determine our core business, and conduct extensive contacts with stakeholders.” Brace said. "From this point of view, our work is very important because it determines the direction of ABB's wind energy business."

According to Braceh, although wind energy has received attention from all countries in the world as a clean energy source, the development of wind energy still has problems that must be overcome in all countries. “In Europe, offshore wind power is the focus of development, such as Germany and the United Kingdom. For such a market, how to ensure the supply chain of the offshore wind power market is a big challenge.” Bai Ruisi said, “Of course, the European debt crisis may also affect The investment in renewable energy makes it difficult to predict the entire market.” When talking about the US market, Barrett believes that the biggest problem lies in the policy level. "The United States has policies that encourage the development of renewable energy, and there are corresponding tax refund programs. But at the end of 2012, the government needs to decide whether to continue implementing these plans."

In China, the biggest problem that has plagued the wind power industry is still the integration of wind power, but this may be an opportunity for ABB. "ABB can not only provide components for wind turbines, but also provide grid-connected products and systems," said Barrett. "And to help wind power smoothly connect to the grid, this is ABB's very important business in the Chinese market." Just two months ago ABB acquired Powercorp, an Australian power automation company that specializes in controlling and managing island renewable energy to achieve high levels of access to renewable energy. According to the company's website, its technology allows more than 90% of wind power to be incorporated into the power generation system.

Challenges in the Chinese market remain unchanged in November last year, ABB announced a medium-term development plan, saying that it will achieve faster growth than the market during 2011-2015. "The medium-term plan also has high expectations for the renewable energy business," said Barrett. According to the plan, ABB’s sales revenue in the renewable energy business in 2015 will reach 5 billion to 6 billion U.S. dollars. At the end of 2010, ABB Group had sales of 32 billion U.S. dollars, of which sales in the Chinese market were 4.4 billion U.S. dollars. Barrett did not disclose the ABB's wind energy business unit's goals in the Chinese market. However, he also did not deny that the drastic decline in the price of wind turbines caused a certain degree of pressure on the enterprises in the industry chain.

In fact, because the profits of the sales of the whole machine are too thin, more and more manufacturers of the whole machine have extended to the upstream and hope to obtain more profits by extending the industrial chain. For ABB, this may not be good news, because it means that some customers may become competitors. "I think this is normal. This is a trend in the development of the industry." Brace said, "We will continue to cooperate with manufacturers who do not produce parts and parts, and will also provide technical support for new manufacturers who are entering the parts manufacturing business. "This is not the only "prescription" Bracey has made for ABB.

"I tend to explain our strategy from a technical point of view," said Barrett. He introduced that the development trend of wind turbines is increasing power, from the most common 1.5-2 megawatts in the market to the current 5-6 megawatts. "ABB must also design and produce these high powers. Fan components." In addition, the development of offshore wind power has also brought new market opportunities to ABB. "Our light HVDC power transmission technology is very suitable for the power grid connection of offshore wind farms," ​​said Barrett.