College teachers start a business, Cheng Huawei's strongest opponent

Do one thing for a lifetime.

Text 丨 Chinese Shang Tao Lue Geng Kangqi

Cisco, ZTE, Apple, Xiaomi ... Among the many opponents in various fields of Huawei, one company has the smallest company, but it is the most proud one.

In 2020, its chairman said a word:

"Thank you Huawei, it is your competition that makes us become as thin as ice and stronger."

who is it?

【All in】

In 2004, everyone felt that Cao Renxian, the chairman of Sunshine Power, was crazy, and he cut off the company's most profitable business.

This means that the company's income of tens of millions of yuan per year is gone.

But this is not the first time Cao Renxian has been evaluated. The last time was in 1997. At that time, he was a university teacher, but wanted to resign to the sea and go to a company.

Cao Renxian is a child of a farmhouse. He studied Kenkou, and was admitted to the industrial electrical automation major of Hefei University of Technology. He stayed in 1993 to teach. The research direction was renewable energy power generation.

However, the basic teaching work day after day is not consistent with Cao Renxian's imagination. In the four -year teacher career, what he ponders every day, in fact, how to put research into practice and become specific business projects.

What supports Cao Renxian is actually his belief in energy trends -with the consumption of fossil energy, the cost of power generation will become higher and higher. If you use renewable energy power generation, the cost will definitely decline in the future, so there will be business opportunities for renewable energy power generation projects.

In 1990, Germany launched the "Thousand Roof Plan". Developed countries such as Japan, the United States, Australia, and other developed countries have successively followed the formulation of preliminary clean energy plans and started their respective temptations. By 1997, when China improved the current "light project" that improved the status quo in the northwest, just entered the implementation, Cao Renxian couldn't sit still anyway.

On November 28, 1997, Hefei Industrial and Commercial Office of Anhui handed a red business license to Cao Renxian. Holding 80,000 yuan for four years, and a total of 500,000 yuan, Sunshine Power was established next to a bathhouse.

But until the Spring Festival, the company did not receive an order. Those relatives who lent him money asked for the money back with various excuses.

It may be the most frustrated time in Cao Renxian's life. He later recalled that "there was no venture capital at that time, and I would not tell the story, so I had to deal with it."

The method of "dealing with" sunlight power supply is to make some traditional emergency power supply and uninterrupted power products. Then use the income of these products to feed your true goal -photovoltaic and wind energy inverters.

The inverter is a special component. As a power converter, it can convert the DC electricity generated by the solar panel of the photovoltaic power station into an AC power that can be connected to the grid, thereby transporting the power to the power grid. Its cost is only about 5%-10%, but it has the effect of launching the whole body for the entire system's power generation efficiency and safety and stability.

In the world of inverters, there is a giant -level existence: German SMA.

In 1985, SMA officially entered the photovoltaic inverter, and in 1987, the first transistor photovoltaic inverter was developed. By 2000, it was not only the originator of the mountains in this field, but also the first choice for the world's photovoltaic industry chain.

But Cao Renxian decided to become the challenger of SMA.

After a few years on the road of "dealing", the uninterrupted power supply business of Sunshine Power has a revenue scale of tens of millions of revenue. More importantly, with the efforts of Cao Renxian, the company's development of photovoltaic inverters has been ongoing.

In the five years of persistence and suffering, the sun power power finally waited for a chance in 2002.

The "Light Project" in the northwest has allowed the Sunshine Power to participate in the first country's "Sending Power to the Township" project. Most photovoltaic departure network system equipment.

In 2003, China's first photovoltaic inverter developed in China with complete independent intellectual property rights, successfully connected grid -connected power generation in Shanghai, breaking the monopoly of foreign companies such as SMA, Schneider, Siemens.

It was also at this time that Cao Renxian made the decision that made people unknown. In 2004, he resolutely cut off the main cash flow business at that time, concentrated company resources, and new energy products such as ALL in photovoltaic and wind energy.

The reason for employees to oppose is very simple. This is the business of Sunshine Power, and it is also a "hero" who has allowed the company to survive in the past few years. It is a pity that it is too unfortunate.

But Cao Renxian has his own reasons- "Making money now does not mean that we will make money next year. Top companies, the products of the top three years later are previewed, and we are still desperately for today's life, and we must have no stamina."

【Counterattack】

Cao Renxian's decision makes sense.

Internally, the inverter business involves a variety of technologies such as microelectronics and semiconductors. The technical content is higher, and more inputs are required. If you want to do well, you must concentrate. Especially after participating in many bidding, he discovered a large shortcoming of domestic brand inverters -not trusted.

At the scene of a tender, the person in charge of the owner directly said to him: "I will give you a consultation fee, don't bid it in the future, it is purely waste of time."

The owner has his own truth. If you choose a foreign product, if you have a problem, he will not have a responsibility, but with a domestic brand, once something goes wrong, it will be difficult to tell the matter.

In addition to humiliation, Cao Renxian's judgment on the market.

In 2000, the German government promulgated and implemented the "Renewable Energy Act", which plans to vigorously support the country's photovoltaic industry through high subsidies to achieve the use of clean energy. Starting from Germany, a group of Western European countries began the industrialization of photovoltaic power generation. Four years later, Germany updated the bill, forced photovoltaic power generation to connect, and also gave subsidies at 0.45-0.62 euros per kWh. This caused a round of photovoltaic tide in Germany.

In China, photovoltaics are also menacing. In Wuxi, Shi Zhengrong's Shangde became the beneficiary of photovoltaic development. Its effect promotes the motivation of local governments and capital to compete for photovoltaic. During the climax of the "Chaser" movement, more than 600 cities across the country took photovoltaic as a strategic industry.

Throughout 2004, the number of new photovoltaic installations exceeded the 1GW mark.

From the inside to the outside, Cao Renxian hugged all the opposition and focused the company's business on the core track of the inverter.

The return comes from the bit. In 2006, the Sunshine power supply undertaken the "Eleventh Five -Year Plan" National Science and Technology Support Plan: R & D topic of wind energy transformers above 1.5MW. In 2008, the photovoltaic inverter of Sunshine Power was successfully applied to the Bird's Nest venue in the Beijing Olympics.

It is a bigger and bigger market.

In 2009, the Golden Sun Demonstration Project and the bidding of the bidding of the Dunhuang Franchise Project in Gansu set off the first wave of inverters.

By 2009, Sunshine Power supply had mastered more than 60%of China's new energy inverter market share, ranking first in the country. Among them, the sales revenue of photovoltaic power products exceeded 100 million yuan, and the sales revenue of wind energy power products exceeded 60 million yuan.

With the improvement of software control and process design level, the sunlight power supply has successfully solved the management difficulty brought by the increase in the increase in inverter power devices. The rated power of the inverter increases, and the cost of single -walwathered costs will be rapidly decreased.

In 2010, the cost of Yangguan Power Products was only 56%of SMA, of which 6%of the labor cost was SMA, and the material cost was 76%of SMA. With this advantage, Sunshine power began to develop an overseas market. This year, its photovoltaic inverter exported to the European market for $ 40 million.

In 2011, the Greek debt crisis was upgraded, and Europe and the United States itself were also in a quagmire, and the photovoltaic subsidy policy was stepped on the emergency brake. This has led to a result -the global photovoltaic market demand shrinks. Relying on the German market SMA, the market declines is equally serious. Sunshine power took the opportunity to aggressive and siege overseas.

On November 2, 2011, Sunshine Power was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, becoming "China's first stock industry". At this time, the sunshine power supply is already the largest photovoltaic inverter manufacturer in China and the leading domestic wind energy variables.

▲ Picture source: Sunshine Power Official Website

From the difficult survival to the domestic leader, the sunshine power has been used for 14 years.

【Shuangxiong】

In the history of sunshine power, there is an inevitable name: Huawei.

Huawei officially entered the field of inverter, with a starting point in 2008. After selecting a photovoltaic inverter as the starting point for its new energy business, a market survey began.

Huawei's discovery is that although the inverter market is considerable, there are very few players who can play. In the market where many newcomers are arched, the product design of the inverter is basically copied. Most companies' fatal injuries are "lack of soft power."

In addition to the sunshine power supply, the real leading position of the industry is still controlled by foreign companies.

After determining the product route, Huawei started its own layout.

Huawei's hand, the goal of aiming is to overthrow the entire industry. Because of the domestic technical strength of the lack of inverters from research and development to manufacturing, it establishes a inverter algorithm and topology research center in Stockholm, Sweden, set up a inverter architecture and design center in Nuremberg, Germany; The center is responsible for connecting the quality of Europe, follow -up products and inspection products, while Shenzhen Huawei Headquarters has become a inverter engineering and manufacturing center.

In the early days of cutting into the inverter industry, Huawei also had a centralized and group -style inverter product at the same time, but in an accident in the observation of the front -line market, Huawei got the opportunity to subvert the industry.

On the "Photovoltaic Sea" on the Gobi Beach in Qinghai, Huawei's technicians found that although the traditional centralized inverter is low in cost, there is a fatal problem: manpower maintenance.

In the summer, in order to cool the inverter, the device is needed to open the dust door. In the evening, the operation and maintenance staff went to clean the dust, 365 days a year, almost every day.

What is even more headache is maintenance. Due to the large number of unilateral connectors, the concentrated inverter needs to wait for manufacturers to go to the site for repair. It takes five to seven days to investigate alone. The shutdown check will affect other normal arrays. As the volume of the power plant is getting larger and larger, the manpower of operation and maintenance will eventually be unsustainable.

This promotes Huawei's technical transition.

In 2014, Huawei launched the industry's first smart photovoltaic power station solution. With a group -type inverter as the core, the operation of monitoring equipment, communication equipment, and cloud computing centers is introduced to remotely accurately monitor the operation of photovoltaic components. Compared with traditional power stations, the operation and maintenance efficiency of smart photovoltaic power stations has increased by 50%, internal yields have increased by more than 3%, and the average power generation has increased by more than 5%.

This is obviously a concentrated manifestation of Huawei in communication information technology, Internet technology, and chip and software capabilities. On December 10, 2014, the photovoltaic power plant consisting of Huawei inverter passed the four grid performance tests of the China Institute of Electricity Sciences. In the same year, Huawei's inverter shipped 4023MW, ranking among the top ten photovoltaic inverters in the world.

In 2015, the ranking released by the US consulting agency IHS showed that Huawei's inverter sales in the Chinese market were 22.6%, which was less than 2 percentage points compared to the 24.5%of the first Sunshine power supply.

At this time, it has only been less than two years since the Huawei inverter officially entered the market.

At this time, the sunshine power supply is still in the progress of the European and American markets. However, Huawei's sudden emergence not only shook the entire industry, but also made Cao Renxian unable to sit again.

Seeing that Huawei's catch -up pace is getting faster and faster, Sunshine power first instinctively adopts market means as countermeasures: In 2015, Sunshine Power continuously signed strategies with the four photovoltaic power stations developers of the Oriental Rising, Linyang New Energy, Nanta Zhuzhou Institute, and Jiangsu Kangda Grand -Dajia Fang Dajia Fang Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Laoska. In the cooperation agreement, the other party guarantees that the inverter products that use sunlight power priority.

However, as a technical entrepreneur, it is obviously not in line with Cao Renxian's original intention to respond to competitors with only market means.

After Huawei launched IV intelligent detection technology, the sunlight power supply also began to quickly promote its intelligent testing technology; after seeing Huawei successfully applied cloud computing technology to energy management, the technological progress of the sunlight power supply followed closely, and successively with Ali successively, with Ali one after another, and Ali successively with Ali Cloud and Education Certification Center collaborated to launch the "Sunshine Cloud" platform to promote its photovoltaic system solution.

In 2015, the shipping volume of Huawei inverters rose to the world's first, and the old -fashioned inverter manufacturer's sunlight power and SMA opened its own "seven -year defending" road: according to Wood Mackenzie data, since 2015, in 2015 From 2021, Huawei's inverter's shipment ranking has been maintained for seven consecutive years, becoming a veritable "photovoltaic hegemon".

This is a good thing for the Chinese inverter industry.

In 2019, Sunshine Power and Huawei's market share has exceeded 1/3 of the world. In the past, the giant SMA was only 8%of its share, far behind the Chinese legion. Foreign giants such as ABB, Schneider, Siemens, etc., which were once unable to have been forced to accelerate strategic retreat.

More importantly, the intelligent and digital changes caused by Huawei are not only a strong player in Huawei, but also a strong leading force for Huawei. At its heyday, Huawei and Sunshine Power were not only Chinese doubles, but also the world's hegemon that said the world. The two total market share of nearly 55%.

Because of this, Cao Renxian left the famous speech at the 20th anniversary celebration of the Sunshine Power:

"Thank you Huawei, it is your competition that makes us become as thin as ice and stronger."

[More true]

In the "Dialogue" column of CCTV in 2020, as a guest, Cao Renxian could not help but feel that the "humiliation" of China's photovoltaic industry was out of raw materials, the market, and equipment outside the Chinese photovoltaic industry:

"These 10 years have been profoundly learned from the lesson, and we have been subject to others before."

Behind this sentence, there are both their own entrepreneurship and difficulty in technical breakthroughs, as well as competitive innovations with Huawei "you chase me".

After ten years of transformation, China's inverter industry has made China a "leading runner" with runners with disruptive production capacity, technology and discourse rights.

Even in 2020, Huawei was forced to withdraw from the US market, and under the premise of its overseas share of its photovoltaic inverter, this market was not eaten by foreign giants -sunlight power, Jinlang Technology, etc. This market is firmly controlled in the hands of domestic companies.

In the global photovoltaic inverter market in 2021, there were 6 Chinese companies in the top ten shipments. In 2022, there were almost no suspense in the top five of China's inverter companies.

In 2021, IHS Markit's global photovoltaic inverter rankings, Sunshine Power has successfully reached the top with a significant lead. For the ranking of the two giants, a short period of time was briefly drawn.

Zhang Guobao, the first former director of the National Energy Administration, once said: The sudden protrusion of photovoltaic in China tells the vivid story of the rise of the grassroots industry in China.

These grassroots entrepreneurs have also achieved wealth counterattacks.

In March 2021, the Hurun Global Rich List was released. Cao Renxian became the new richest man in Anhui with a net worth of 5 times and 65 billion yuan a year, setting a new high in the Anhui rich list in recent years.

But what Cao Renxian often thinks is not his own wealth, but the future of an enterprise.

He was very puzzled, from the long -term bankruptcy Shangde, Saifei to Yingli, who was deeply trapped in the debt crisis. These very healthy companies have also worked very hard, but still failed to get rid of the predicament of "unable to support".

"I feel very distressed about this, what's the hell about this?"

Cao Renxian couldn't help asking, how to ensure the evergreen of the enterprise? Will the next crisis be sunshine power?

Perhaps it is this "more true" that allowed the sunshine power to cross many crises and become the only one who has made a profit in the past years.

On April 19, the performance of Sunshine Power showed that the net profit attributable to the mother in 2021 decreased by 19%year -on -year. Investors quickly "turned their faces", the company's market value evaporated over 36 billion in two days, and many media called "Sunshine power burst!" Facing the aggressive public opinion, Cao Renxian first did "more true analysis".

It turned out that the projects of Sunshine Power in Vietnam and Myanmar, due to emergencies such as cancellation, price increase, and fines of the epidemic, "the overall reduction of about 100 billion performances", resulting in increasing income increase.

Secondly, the company's layout of new businesses such as power stations and development, energy storage, etc., "the step is a bit big."

Cao Renxian quickly deployed to solve the problems of supply chains and projects one by one, making the overall situation of Q1 improve, and the power station business turned losses.

The sunlight power supply that rejuvenates the constitution will be recovered in less than two months. And the market value has reached a record high, exceeding 200 billion yuan!

Cao Renxian often said that Chinese inverter enterprises were born in the grass, and it was extremely difficult to get into this day. Not only must enterprises be down -to -earth, but the stability of the industrial environment is also very important.

In 2018, in order to encourage the healthy and orderly development of the photovoltaic industry, the Chinese government has planned the "531 New Deal" to reduce photovoltaic power generation subsidies.

Many dealers, so they face the inventory backlog and loss of money. In order to express confidence in the industry, Cao Renxian decided that no matter how the contract is signed, any request can be refunded. Individual refund forms did not follow up in time, and he also named the person in charge of the business department.

The image of the industrial image was damaged, and Cao Renxian even directly made suggestions. In the text, we said with distress: "When we hear the word" subsidy ", our photovoltaic people often can't lift their heads because the outside world misunderstands too much!"

After reaching the global inverter overlord, Cao Renxian has been thinking about how to continue to focus and professionalism in this field. In this matter, he is even more true.

In 2020, Anhui Province proposed that during the "14th Five -Year Plan" period, the top ten emerging industries were vigorously developed.

Seeing that there was no photovoltaic inside, Cao Renxian was anxious at the time: "How can we not be inside in the photovoltaic industry in Anhui?"

This has promoted the provincial government to launch the "Dingge Communication Mechanism". Wang Qingxian, the governor of Anhui Province, personally arranged communication to fully listen to the company's opinions.

In the end, in Anhui's "Fourteenth Five -Year Plan" plan, the top ten emerging industries emphasized that "promoting the development of key technologies for photovoltaic manufacturing and promoting the application of high -efficiency and low -cost photovoltaic technology." The effect of attaching importance to it is immediate. In less than two years, there are more than a dozen head photovoltaic companies from Anhui.

This scene is Cao Renxian's love for the photovoltaic industry from the heart. This is full of blood, starting from Cao Renxian's business, it is already a kind of "righteousness."

Over the past 25 years, China's photovoltaic industry has been able to grow from a poor and two -white white -rail and mobile payment.

Behind it, although it is inseparable from the exquisite planning and determination of planners, but even more inseparable is a company that focuses on industry progress like Huawei and Sunshine Power, as well as Entrepreneurs who have been struggling for 25 years.

——End —————

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