Chinese version of Tesla, a "inverse" from the wind power industry

Why is it a vision and what is the vision?

Text ｜ Bao School Thousand

Source ｜ Number (ID: Digital36kr)

Cover Source ｜ IC Photo

It is difficult to imagine that Chinese companies have the most chance to become "the next Tesla". It is not a new forces of car construction or power battery overlords, but a Mustang from the wind power industry.

The company claims to be a smart energy company and is intended to break the inherent energy system and game rules. The founder Zhang Lei knew that his goal was long -term, so he named the company "Vision".

In the past 14 years, everything it does seems to be incompatible with the industry, such as cutting into the low wind speed market, layout of "partial door" technology such as digitalization, power batteries, and energy storage outside the wind power, and insist on not being listed.

However, this "alternative", in just 8 years, has achieved the second domestic wind power market. It has won most of the old -fashioned players and opened a path that is different from the predecessors.

In October 2021, the vision received a strategic financing of Chunhua Capital of $ 600 million, and the investment amount refreshed the record of carbon neutralization.

Open the new wind power

In 2007, when the vision was "late", when the target was aimed at the wind power market, it was in the stage of fierce competition in mainstream players.

At that time, Jinfeng and Huarui and other rivals were opened in the “Sanno” area with high -quality wind -energy resources. Many players began to fight a price war. The distant view that is not born in the past lacks the customer base, and the strength of the capital is stretched.

Zhang Lei was in the year of standing, left London Financial City, and returned to his hometown in Jiangsu Jiangyin to lead 10 "returnees" to create a vision. But the popularity of wind power was inferior to photovoltaic at the time. This field has cross -hailed industries in many disciplines such as aerodynamics, material science, and intelligent control. The technical threshold is very high.

Early fan, low efficiency, insufficient warranty rate, and tedious operation and maintenance in the later period. If you can find a traditional fan and improve comprehensive ability, you can master the foundation of life.

Overseas fan manufacturers have brought some inspiration to the vision.

For example, the data of the wind power faucet Visteas collected the sensor, stored in the data collector stored in the wind farm, and then to the background server through the network summary to access the "supercompitious computer" for processing. Based on wind power big data, Vestas has developed a systematic management plan from early to later operation and maintenance to help customers increase their income during the investment period.

The foundation of China's wind power industry is mainly to learn from foreign -funded fan manufacturers. The emerging intelligent fan is both a gold mine in China and a wild place. If you can develop "new species" in the blank period of the market, and use wind power data as the core asset, it will inevitably form an dimensional blow to traditional fan manufacturers.

Intelligent control technology is the most important in the vision. The perfect control system must be a fingering fan. However, most fan cannot accurately identify the impact of the wind. The control system is often deceived by the randomness of the wind. Essence

Even the leading fan manufacturers of foreign technology at the time were difficult to achieve the extreme. The core problem appears on the identification and controller design method of the dynamic characteristics of the controlled object.

In order to overcome this problem, the core controller has been developed in a visual view, and combined with the step recognition method commonly used by the process industry to identify the dynamic characteristics of the fan, establish the dynamic model of the fan under different wind conditions, and then design control based on the control goals to design control goals to design control targets. Algorithm, setting up control parameters, and achieving the optimal control of the fans.

In April 2008, the first smart fan 77/1.5MW prototypes carrying the vision design concept were offline.

The offline ceremony was held in the production workshop, and the team demonstrated the entire process of actual power generation. When the operating data is projected on the floor by the projector, senior experts in the industry are amazed by the core technology of the vision.

After the measured, the power generation efficiency of the 77/1.5MW prototype was increased by 20%compared to the traditional fan. This depends on the R & D team to convert advanced intelligent control technology and Knowhow into 2 million complicated control code, which is equivalent to 20 times the amount of ordinary fan code.

Soon, the prototype was powered on the Longyuan Qidong Power Plant. The vision also unexpectedly discovered the new continent, the low wind speed market with a wind speed of 6m/s.

Although this area accounts for more than 60%of my country's wind energy resources, the wind resources are far less high -quality than the "three north" areas, and the development is difficult to return. Therefore, it has been abandoned by investors.

After the power generation efficiency of the fan has been improved, the vision breaks the industry conclusion that does not have development value in low wind speed areas. The market's attitude towards a low air speed area reversed in 2010.

On the one hand, the "Sanbei" region has fallen into a low -quality and low -cost vicious competition. After the "naked swimmer" Huali wind power floats the sea, it prompts the wind power industry to urgently need to reverse the "bad coin to expel good coin"; on the other hand The "abandoning wind and electricity limit" has deteriorated. Most wind power investment projects move to the east and eastward, running in low -wind speed areas.

At this time, the vision has completed the design of the 1.5MW 87 -meter wind wheel low wind speed smart fan. In January 2011, the whole machine was used in the nation's first low wind speed field -Anhui Lai'an Wind Farm. With good operating conditions, this world's first low -air speed smart fan has become a long -view business card.

Vision Galileo Super Apostatic Fan

Although the installation volume of the long -term view in 2011 was only one -tenth of the leading enterprises, to some extent, the vision changed the industry's technical direction and development direction. Relevant sources of the National Energy Administration also said that the emergence of low -air -speed fan technology has made this wind resource depression a key area for my country's wind power development. In the low -speed market, the vision has won the favor of more and more developers. In 2012, the vision was climbed from the 14th position of the industry to seventh with a 540,000 -kilowatt. Two years later, the newly added installed capacity of more than 2 million kilowatts, jumping to China third and eighth in the world, per capita income is 3 to 5 times that of wind power peers.

New Energy Navigation

After the low wind speed market occupies a place, after mastering the experience of how to manage the crew, the vision has gradually shifted from the equipment provider to technical service providers, and strives to enter a higher added value through wind power intelligent operation and maintenance.

In October 2014, the vision of the wind power intelligent management platform "Greenwich" was released.

In theory, a wind power project requires high -performance calculations of huge data from the macro -site selection to the later wind farm operation and maintenance, and then scientific decision -making by the establishment of a fluid model.

In Europe and the United States, which is highly developed in the power market, these are already value -added services for wind power consumption. However, the thinking of domestic wind power development at that time has not yet reached such a refined level, and the feeling of serious dependence is not data.

For example, the wind around the mountains is relatively large. If the local government intends to transfer the land resources, the owner will contact the electricity design institute to test the wind. After collecting the data for one year, it will judge whether there is investment value before entering the fan procurement link.

The business leader of a large power generation group has seen the wind distribution map provided by Ge Mei. Although the accurate site selection is indeed very good, they do not need it.

For the owners, they are more concerned about whether they can smoothly sign the wind farm development agreement with the local government, and tend to use the small and medium -sized operation and maintenance teams with lower fees. Essence

However, Zhang Lei believes that the digital world can find a way out for the physical world. The development team integrates dozens of traditional wind farms design in data and functions, and uses supercomputes to establish a digital wind farm model to improve the accuracy of complex algorithms, so that the investment behavior of the wind farm becomes more controllable and risky smaller.

He described "Greenwich" as "a compass of a helmsman in the new energy sea" to help new energy investors identify risks and identify investment opportunities.

The layout of the vision in this field is regarded by the industry analysts as a future investment.

From the entire machine to the operation and maintenance to the intelligent platform, it is in line with the law of industrial development. From the perspective of the development speed and scale of the Chinese wind power industry at that time, the era of intelligent wind power was not far away. The vision saw that the owner's understanding of this area is gradually increasing, and it enters the market with free software strategies.

The visual view introduces "Greenwich" with the customer: the macro site selection plan is only 32 seconds, the high -resolution fluid simulation does not exceed 30 minutes, and the multi -model mixed row is completed in 10 minutes ... Below, the design process of a set of wind farms can be completed within 1 hour. And this set of digital solutions for life cycles can at least increase investment income of 20%of the wind farm.

The more difficult it is to design the project, the more you can use the martial arts of "Greenwich". For example, the first key project of the Vision -Zhongguang Nuclear 300 MW low -winding wind farm, located in a complex hills in the terrain. During the preliminary testing stage, "Greenwich" monitors the negative cutting problem of 48 machine positions. It configures two suitable models for it to avoid the negative impact on power generation and the safety hazards of the fan.

All of this is based on smart fans to collect adequate data information, using big data analysis and high -performance computing technology.

According to Zhang Lei's concept, wind power equipment and wind power operations are not enough to make the vision called "smart energy enterprise". Soon after, the vision of the "Apollo" cloud platform was launched for distributed photovoltaic, from the design of assets to the construction of assets to the management of assets, which is similar to that of "Greenwich".

Founder and CEO Zhang Lei from Vision Technology

In fact, at the beginning of entrepreneurship, energy information and digitalization are the goals. Zhang Lei emphasizes the importance of data and information more than once.

Anhui Laorun Lowwind Wind Electric Farm is the first project developed by the vision and the owner. In 2011, it was officially connected to power generation. During the project assessment stage, the backbone team of the two sides analyzed the 5GB computer data for a week before finding the risk point that the project investment needs to focus on.

At that time, China added hundreds of wind power projects each year, and there were hundreds of existing assets. According to the analysis of pure handicrafts, it is obviously unable to meet the requirements of scientific decision -making. The industry does not have in -depth analysis technologies and information conditions for projects, so it is confused.

Compared with the running data of the fan, the number of wind resources data is much larger. The vision believes that in order to do a good job of wind power asset management, it is necessary to summarize the equipment operation and data of the natural environment, establish the numerical model of the wind farm, and then realize the high -precision asset operation level assessment.

In 2011, Wind OS ™, the wind farm management platform, was developed in Vision. This set of systems based on the Internet of Things and cloud computing technology. Through various data analysis of smart fan sensors Improve wind power asset returns. In 2014, the long -distance view was fledgling, and the international market and international well -known software suppliers such as IBM, OSISOFT PI, and Instep were competed. In the end, with the digital wind farm intelligent "housekeeper" Wind OS ™, the vision has won orders from the American Atlantic Power Farm with its advantageous system capabilities.

Although IBM and Westas have cooperated with the development of Firestorm supercomputers, which are specially used for the calculation and analysis of wind power data, Wind OS ™ in the EBA management mode (the ratio of the actual power generation and theoretical power generation of the wind power unit).

European and American wind farm operators have also made similar product plans, but due to the uncertainty of the calculation model, it cannot be successfully landed. The vision conducted an evaluation of the actual operation of the wind farm through the EBA framework, and was favored by the new energy company Pattern. Increase the asset benefits through big data mining, and the Vision in the vision helps to increase the EBA value of a certain wind farm in the United States to 90%.

A Internet architect carefully analyzed Wind OS ™ that even if competitors can copy plagiarism, they did not experience a large amount of data governance process in the early stage. It is impossible to design accurate, stable and reliable algorithms.

After the wind power capacity jumped to the third market, in 2014, the long -distance view began to set up a marketing team, ran all over the north and south of the river, sent services to the door, seized the market opportunities, and pushed products and services to the market at the fastest speed.

Not only that, the vision also integrates global digital energy technology and market resources in Germany, and uses laboratory thinking to open up the mechanism of energy production, transmission, storage and consumption system.

In 2015, Venture Capital Fund focused on the energy Internet -related fields in Silicon Valley in the United States, and invested in VIDDER, an IoT data security service provider. The network security architecture developed by the company to eliminate network attacks before germination. This investment is considered an important settlement of data security under the energy Internet ecosystem.

Subsequently, Bazefield, the second largest renewable energy asset management software company in Europe, invested in the world's leading world -leading smart grid big data company Autograph. Through capital integration, the dream of smart energy became a close -up.

In 2016, Wind OS ™, Greenwich and Apollo accessable renewable energy assets exceeded 50 million kilowatts, becoming the world's largest smart energy management enterprise.

The mainstream European media praised the vision similar to the "apple in the energy field", but for companies that bear the "change of the future", the vision has just begun.

New energy competition is coming

One of the most "alternative" features on the vision is its "not doing business".

Unlike most domestic energy storage manufacturers and new energy companies only provide battery cells or only integration, the vision is currently the only new energy industry that can master the underlying key technologies in the field of wind power, energy storage, and energy IoT. New energy enterprises with management and operation management services.

In 2014, Tesla Model S, who was popular all over the world, entered the Chinese market. Zhang Lei was the earliest batch of owners. He said the move was intended to experience and think about the layout of electric vehicles and energy Internet.

从特斯拉在储能电池和能源消费方式的创新找到灵感，不仅是他对特斯拉创始人马斯克推崇备至，更在于两家公司有诸多相似之处——例如都在风光、能源网络、 The terminals are layout and do not see themselves as manufacturing companies.

Of course, Tesla is biased towards the hardware investment and integration of heavy assets, and the vision has always regarded software as a renewable adhesive, using hundreds of millions Essence

In 2015, Zhang Lei frequently flew to developed countries in Europe and the United States to study the industry ecology. On the other side of the ocean, Tesla is starting a large -scale research on the innovation of battery technology, and then jointly invested 5 billion U.S. dollars with Panasonic to build a lithium battery factory GigaFactory.

Reducing battery costs by mass production not only helps Tesla turning electric vehicles into daily -selling products, but also prepares for the development of the emerging energy storage market.

At this time, Zhang Lei has realized that if the vision is to make wind power photovoltaic the mainstream energy of the world, it is necessary to have the ability to build energy storage.

Vision smart energy storage system

On the eve of the opening of the GigaFactory factory, the vision completed the strategic control equity negotiation of Sonnen, the largest energy storage company in Europe.

In 2016, Tesla's family energy storage battery PowerWall sold 10,000 sets of energy storage equipment with its popular electric vehicle business. With a weak advantage of 12,000 sets, Sonnen reached the world's largest battery product seller, becoming Tesla's largest competitor.

Many power companies threw olive branches to Sonnen, but almost they were rejected. Sonnen hopes to use more energy to face the market, but the vision is an exception, and the share of the D round of financing is successfully obtained, because the "three views" are combined.

For example, both believe that the cost of electricity production in the future will be almost zero. The challenges facing the new energy system are not the cost of electricity but system costs. Therefore, a platform needs to be integrated to reduce system costs.

The vision uses Sonnen as part of the energy ecosystem, and through the long -view energy IoT platform ENOS ™, tens of thousands of energy storage batteries are installed around the world to connect, more accurate load prediction and management, and respond to the grid side side more efficiently. FM, peak -regulating demand, and quickly extend to new business areas.

In addition, the vision has not invested in energy companies such as CHARGEPOINT and Protectwise, covering the fields of electric vehicles, commercial and home energy management systems, and integrates with the energy storage system.

However, the battery cell is the soul of the energy storage system. In 2019, the vision completed the wholly -owned acquisition of the Nissan car battery subsidiary AESC, incorporated the battery manufacturing into the business category, and established the perspective driving force. This is also a category that wind power companies have never been involved.

Established in 2007, AESC is a power battery business department of Nissan Motor. It has long been hidden under the aura of Nissan Listener (Leaf), the best -selling model of electric vehicles, and its sales reached a peak from 2011 to 2014. As a Nissan royal battery company, AESC's market share in 2014 was second only to Panasonic, ranking second in the world.

However, due to the limitations of the deep bundling of the two, it is difficult for AESC to expand external customers, and the cost is high. In 2018, AESC's battery shipments have retreated to fifth in the world. In 2016, Nissan released the news of spin -off and sold AESC equity, and began to find buyers globally.

Prior to this, Jinshajiang Capital had intended to acquire AESC, but the acquisition plan was finally folded due to the failure to raise funds. This made the vision first, and became a new intention.

The reason why the remarkable acquisition of AESC is to pay attention to its safety and production technology on the one hand; on the other hand, the purchased battery cell is "black box" and cannot create value for digital technology.

Incorporating AESC into Majesty is not only conducive to designing the battery cells and chemical systems on its own, but also improving the understanding of application scenarios. In the evaluation.

Zhang Lei judged that the cost decrease of the cost of photovoltaic and wind power will be repeated in the battery industry. The entire battery industry will reduce costs at a rate of about 15%in the future. By 2025, Vision AESC is expected to reduce the cost of the battery to $ 50 per kilowatt -hour.

Similar to the development route in the wind power era, the vision is also in the field of power battery fields to participate in the competition of the global power battery market from an international perspective. Today, the vision has AESC production bases in China, Japan, the United States, Britain, and France. There are more than 600,000 passenger cars worldwide equipped with high -performance soft -pack power batteries equipped with vision power, and no major battery safety accidents have occurred.

At the level of battery manufacturing alone, there are 770 quality control projects in production. In order to make the data of the production chain traceable and tracking, there are more than 2,000 data collection points produced by AESC. After installing it to the vehicle, you can continue to monitor and learn the battery data. If the efficiency is reduced, the system will automatically compare the reason for the initial production data analysis and then optimize.

The future of the battery is not simple electrochemical, but digital electrochemical. The goal of the vision AESC is to rank among the top three in the world, and has increased its global market share to 20%.

In October 2021, the vision received a strategic financing of Chunhua Capital exceeded $ 600 million; in June 2022, Sequoia China and GIC also injected $ 210 million in Series A financing. This is currently the carbon neutralization that is favored by capital. In the track, two transactions with the largest financing amount.

Jeremy Rifkin, a world -renowned thinker and economist Jeremy Rifkin, had a dialogue with Zhang Litai. He believes that the combination of energy technology and Internet technology will trigger the third industrial revolution. The "alternative" vision will play a key promoter role.

Capital and industry are also looking forward to waiting for this new energy hidden giant to rise in the near future.

references:

"Vision Energy Internet"

"Why is the Vision"

Ten Years of Vision: The Growth Road of "Later" "

"Smart Wind Power Difficult to Service China Water and Water: Doing in China is more extensive"

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