Giant patent expires!

On July 19, the patent pultrusion process of the carbon fiber core for wind power blades of Danish wind power equipment giant Vestas expired
.
Many companies, including Mingyang Intelligence, Sinoma Technology, and Times New Materials, have deployed carbon fiber pultrusion production lines, and will bring their products to the market only after the Vestas patent expires
.
Affected by this, on July 19, Zhongfu Shenying, Jilin Chemical Fiber, Chenhua Co.
, Ltd.
, Akeli and many other stocks related to the wind power concept rose by more than 10%
.

Vestas' carbon beam patent protection expires

On July 19, 2002, Vestas applied for the relevant patents of wind turbine blades with carbon fiber strips as the main material to the national intellectual property offices of China/Denmark, the European Patent Office, the World Intellectual Property Office and other international intellectual property offices.
The patent claims contain a method of making a prefabricated strip and a method of making a wind turbine blade
.
When Vestas applied for the carbon beam patent in 2002, many wind turbine manufacturers in China had not yet been born
.

Vestas was the first foreign OEM to enter the wind power market and installed China's first wind turbine
.
In 1986, three V15-55/11kW wind turbines from Vestas settled in the Malan Wind Farm in Rongcheng, Shandong
.
Since then, foreign OEMs led by Vestas once dominated the Chinese wind power market and monopolized many cutting-edge wind power technologies
.

On July 19, 2022, Vestas' carbon beam patent protection will expire.
Since carbon fiber materials have many irreplaceable advantages in wind turbine blades, other wind turbine blade manufacturers will launch wind turbine blade products using carbon beams.
Contribute a very large incremental market for carbon fiber in the field of wind power
.

At home and abroad, the layout of blades with carbon beams has been started

The wind turbine blade is the most important part of the wind turbine, which determines the wind catching ability of the wind turbine
.

In the past, the power of the fan was small and the blades were short.
The traditional material used was glass fiber, but the performance of glass fiber was limited.
When the power of the fan reached a certain level, the glass fiber could not meet the mechanical requirements of longer blades, and carbon fiber materials were required to provide certain degree of mechanical support
.
Whether it is a carbon-glass mixture or a carbon beam, the purpose of use is to replace the original material with a part of carbon fiber, improve the mechanical properties, and allow the fan blades to be made longer
.

According to the research report of Guangwei Composites, in the past 5 or 6 years, the end customer of carbon fiber application in wind power is mainly Vestas.
Start using carbon beams as the blade layout to adapt to the current trend of high-power wind power development
.

From the perspective of carbon fiber, in the past, low-cost large tow fibers did not have particularly good application scenarios.
With the successful development and development of carbon beam products, large tow fibers have been reasonably applied and the application scale has been expanded year by year, but the production capacity of low-cost carbon fibers is limited.
, so the development of carbon beam business is limited by the source of low-cost large tow carbon fiber
.
With the construction of carbonization capacity using low-cost raw silk products as raw materials in China, the supply capacity of low-cost carbon fibers will be enhanced in the next year and the next year, which may lead to a clear development trend at both ends of supply and demand
.

Positive policies and broad prospects for industrial development

According to the previous news from the public platform of the central budget and final accounts, the Ministry of Finance issued the 2022 wind power photovoltaic power generation subsidy fund budget in advance, of which wind power is 1.
55 billion yuan and photovoltaic power is 2.
28 billion yuan
.
In the context of the large capacity of single wind power and the rapid development of offshore wind power, the penetration rate of carbon fiber in the field of wind power is expected to continue to increase in the future
.

Data shows that the global carbon fiber used in wind power blades will reach 33,000 tons in 2021 and is expected to reach 80,600 tons in 2025, with a CAGR of 25%
.
The carbon fiber required for wind power blades in China accounts for 68% of the world's total.
Thanks to the rapid growth of wind power installed capacity under the background of global carbon neutrality, and the increase in the penetration rate of carbon fiber under the background of large-scale blades, wind power blades will still drive the growth of carbon fiber demand in the future.
the main engine
.

Things may not be as simple as you think

In the vast market capacity of wind power, with the disappearance of key patent barriers, domestic and foreign carbon fiber-related companies may enter the market to compete for this market
.

However, it cannot be ignored that in wind power, an intellectual property-intensive industry, patents and trade secrets are intertwined, and there have been many interesting intellectual property cases
.

In 2012, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was convicted in the United States of infringing GE's low-voltage ride-through patent and required $170 million in compensation
.

Since then, GE has repeatedly used the patent to sue competitors, including Vestas
.

In July 2017, GE accused Vesta that the V90-3.
0MW, V100-2.
0MW and V117-3.
3MW models installed by Vesta in the United States all used its "zero voltage ride-through" patented technology, and filed a patent lawsuit against Vestas in a California court.

.

In 2020, GE repeated its old tricks, suing Siemens Gamesa, accusing it of infringing the same patents, and filed a Section 337 investigation with the U.
S.
International Trade Commission (ITC)
.

Therefore, Chinese wind power companies and carbon fiber companies, after evaluating the expiration of the key Vestas patent, will be able to enter the market safely and do a great job without worrying about the risk of the patent, maybe more than that Simple
.