"Wind Energy" Cover Story|Cui Jianye: Based on technology, build a "bridge" to customers

There are always some memories that will be polished into pearls by the years and shine in the years like songs. Taking the wind as a horse, letting go of the song of youth, looking back on the time of persistent exploration and forging ahead, and the confident and simple smiling faces, that is the story of time that belongs to every wind energy person.

The song of youth with the wind as a horse!

Cui Jianye: Based on technology, build a "bridge" to customers

After several rescheduling, the reporter finally met Cui Jianye. He had just finished visiting customers from other places, and his face was slightly tired, but he was still very talkative and clear in the interview. As a marketing technology manager of Sany Renewable Energy, Cui Jianye has long adapted to the intense work rhythm of "running customers everywhere". Even though it is inevitable that there will be a sense of exhaustion, Cui Jianye tries his best to adjust himself every time, face each customer in the best state, listen to their voices attentively, and strive to build a "bridge" of communication between the company and customers. Over the past 8 years, Cui Jianye has continued to improve his knowledge and skills with full enthusiasm and strong desire for knowledge, gradually shifted from the technical side to the market side, and became a compound talent with "technology" and "understanding of marketing".

Maintain an intellectual mindset

Talking about the days when he first entered Sany Renewable Energy, Cui Jianye felt that he was "painful and happy".

At that time, relying on the professional knowledge he learned during college and the experience accumulated after graduating from a wind power development company to engage in wind farm operation and maintenance for one year, Cui Jianye already had a certain amount of wind turbine technical reserves. However, since he joined Sany Renewable Energy and engaged in marketing technology, it required both the ability to evaluate wind energy resources and formulate solutions, as well as good communication skills, which brought a lot of challenges to Cui Jianye.

"At that time, I knew a little about the various components of wind turbines, but wind energy resources were a completely different field, and I didn't know much about it, and I didn't know how to calculate the wind measurement data or information, so I felt very lost. Fortunately, I have a strong desire for knowledge, and I feel that as long as I concentrate on learning, there is nothing that I can't learn. He recalled to Wind Energy.

Relying on this momentum, when he encountered something he didn't understand, Cui Jianye asked his colleagues for advice, or looked up literature on the Internet to learn on his own. During that time, Cui Jianye felt that he was improving every day, which helped him persevere in his job and gradually became able to implement projects independently. At the same time, Cui Jianye also slowly figured out the trick of communicating with customers.

"You have to ask questions with your brain, and you have to explore more. If you don't understand something, you should try more methods, think more for yourself, and some things may be figured out. "When I figure it out, I'm excited to finally learn something that's new beyond the textbook, and I feel a sense of accomplishment, which pushes me to study hard." ”

In his subsequent career, Cui Jianye has always maintained this mentality.

Due to the needs of his work, Cui Jianye has often visited the project site for surveys, covering more than 20 provinces such as Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Guangxi, and Shandong.

As we all know, due to the remote location of wind farms, the survey work is not only very physically tested, but also full of dangers, such as scorching heat, heavy rain, severe cold, snake and insect bites, and loss of contact in no man's land...... Risk is everywhere.

"It's hard work and risky, but I enjoy the process and it's been a fun experience. It is better to read 10,000 books than to travel 10,000 miles. On the one hand, through actual visits and exchanges with local people, you can learn about the topography, culture, customs and customs of various places, which will help enrich your life experience. On the other hand, admiring the beautiful scenery along the way can cultivate sentiments. He said.

In Cui Jianye's view, the above accumulation is also of great benefit to his own work. "For example, these can be good conversations with our customers, which helps us build relationships and make friends with them faster."

It was the optimistic spirit and strong intellectual curiosity that helped Cui Jianye overcome one difficulty after another, allowing him to grow from a marketing technology specialist to a marketing technology manager step by step.

Get ahead of your customers

After joining Sany Renewable Energy, Cui Jianye has participated in or led the preliminary macro site selection, mast scheme, wind energy resource assessment, micro site selection and other projects of Inner Mongolia Tongliao Base, Huaneng Longdong Energy Base, Huaneng Shangdu Million Kilowatt Wind Power Base, and Jingneng International 2.38 million Kilowatt Wind Power Base.

For wind power projects, whether the preliminary work is done well or not will directly determine their operational performance in the 20-year life cycle. This prompted Cui Jianye to seriously think about how to better "be responsible for customers". "Be sure to get ahead of the customer, don't wait for the owner to ask for it, but think about what you can do in advance."

He took the Tongliao base of Inner Mongolia as an example and said that when the project was still in the early stage, Sany Renewable Energy was informed of the relevant information. Due to the large installed scale of the project, Sany Renewable Energy attaches great importance to it and hopes to make it a benchmark case within the company.

At that time, the design institute had already conducted a preliminary selection of the aircraft type and machine position, but had not yet carried out on-site survey work. After obtaining the preliminary plan and obtaining the consent of the owner, Sany Renewable Energy quickly set up a team to go to the site to conduct a survey of the primary selection sites one by one, and investigate the situation in combination with the constraints of the project siteAs well as the progress of wind turbine technology, the layout of models and machine locations has been optimized, and new schemes have been formulated.

"The owner was very touched, I didn't expect us to be able to run hundreds of camera positions, do the work so meticulously, and put forward practical suggestions for improvement for the problems existing in it." Cui Jianye recalled.

Compared with the primary selection plan, Sany Renewable Energy's optimization plan reduced 20 machine locations, helped the owner reduce land acquisition by about 6,600 square meters, and saved about 75 million yuan in equipment procurement, construction, operation and maintenance costs. After the project is connected to the grid, the unit is running stably, with an average availability rate of 99.6% by the end of April 2024.

The same story happened at Huaneng's million-kilowatt wind power base. The project is one of the first large-scale new energy base projects in China, as well as the first "wind, solar, thermal storage" base-type integrated energy project of Huaneng Group, with a total installed capacity of 2 million kilowatts. Among them, 120 5MW wind turbines of Sany Renewable Energy were adopted, becoming the company's first base project with more than 100 units with a single capacity of 5MW.

In the early stage of project development and construction, Sany Renewable Energy quickly organized Cui Jianye's team to conduct an on-site survey of the initial selection of the design institute, and found that some of the sites needed to be excluded due to their proximity to residential areas, woods, signal towers, etc., which would inevitably affect the overall installed capacity of the project. Sany Renewable Energy gave feedback to the owner in a timely manner and suggested a model with a larger single machine capacity, which was adopted by the latter.

"The larger the installed scale of the project, the more the work must be done in advance, and the more detailed it must be." Cui Jianye believes that "the design institute and the machine manufacturer should participate in it together, work together to formulate the best wind power project design plan for the owner, and finally build each project into a benchmark project." ”

At present, Cui Jianye has put more energy into communicating with customers and design institutes to provide support for the company's marketing work and solution formulation. This is equivalent to building a "bridge" of communication between the company and customers: externally, in-depth understanding of customer needs, using professional knowledge and technical capabilities to help customers solve problems; Internally, we will convey the real needs of customers in a timely manner and promote relevant departments to provide customers with the best solutions.

"Every visit should be purposeful, and through multiple communication exchanges, we can deepen mutual understanding and mutual trust. In this way, the owner and the design institute will recognize our professionalism and have confidence in the solutions we provide. Cui Jianye said.

The road is getting wider and wider

Since his career, Cui Jianye has witnessed the counterattack of Sany Renewable Energy, ranking fifth in China and eighth in the world as a "dark horse"; I have seen the growth and maturity of China's wind power industry, as well as the rapid progress of technology.

"I am fortunate to grow with the industry and experience the earth-shaking changes that have taken place in the industry, and many new tools and methods have been introduced, which has greatly improved work efficiency." Cui Jianye said.

Taking the survey link of micro site selection as an example,droneThe use is becoming more and more extensive, which not only effectively reduces the workload and safety risks faced by the survey personnel, but also greatly improves the efficiency of the survey. You only need to enter the coordinate points in the drone, and it will automatically take pictures of the surrounding areas of the primary selection camera site, so as to provide support for troubleshooting constraints, generating panoramic images and 3D reality models, and judging construction conditions.

Such bits and pieces of progress are like a trickle converging into the sea, driving the continuous decline of the LCOE of wind power in China. In the past 20 years, the average LCOE of onshore wind power in China has dropped from about 1.5 yuan/kWh to 0.15 yuan/kWh, a decrease of 88%. The average LCOE of offshore wind power fell by 74% to 0.33 yuan/kWh. Wind power has become the cheapest form of electricity.

Behind this is the joint efforts of all participants in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and Sany Renewable Energy, where Cui Jianye is located, is an important force in it. In recent years, Sany Renewable Energy has taken the lead in the development and cost control of large-capacity wind turbines and long blades, relying on continuous adjustment of product structure, acceleration of technology iteration, strengthening the supply capacity of its own key components, and promoting the application of digital and intelligent technology.

The continuous reduction of costs has laid the foundation for wind power to continue to open up new application space. Wind power supports the decarbonization of power, steel, chemicals, aviation, and shipping through the supply of green and cheap electricity, and the generation of green hydrogen, green ammonia, green methane, green methanol, and green synthetic fuels with the help of the "PowertoX" model, and has become the "energy base" for building a zero-carbon society. This is exactly the original intention of the wind power industry to pursue a lower LCOE.

The vigorous development of the wind power industry has made Cui Jianye more and more confident in his career prospects.

"In the future, our customers will become more and more diversified, which requires me to further open up my work ideas, learn more about spot trading, hydrogen production, ammonia production, methanol production and other aspects related to wind power, and lead the team to provide customers with comprehensive package solutions." He told Wind Energy, "I will go deeper into the front line, strengthen exchanges with customers, design institutes, scientific research institutions, industry associations, etc., and fully understand the market situation and customer needs." ”

In the face of the goal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality and the new power system, wind power still needs to speed up and improve the quality of development, which requires all wind energy people to continue to struggle, and Cui Jianye has embarked on a new journey.