With a lot of suspicions, a group of Europeans followed Li Song into the production workshop. The workshop is a hot production scene, more than a dozen huge fan nacelles are lined up, and there are workers busy around and inside each nacelle, installing various accessories into it. Overhead cars shuttle back and forth, lifting components into place.

Most of the Europeans in the survey team came from wind turbine manufacturers, and they were no strangers to such scenes. An EU official like Emmeline naturally sees only the excitement of the scene, but others see the doorway.

"You're using a casting rack!"

In front of a cabin, Reading keenly noticed that the racks that the workers were installing had no weld marks, but were cast, and he couldn't help but cry out in surprise.

The frame is an important structural part on the wind turbine, which is used to connect the gearbox, yaw bearing, yaw drive and other components. The structure of the frame is very complex, and at the same time, it needs to bear a great load in the work, and it is very difficult to process. There are generally two processes for the forming of the frame, namely the casting process and the welding process. In the former, a mold is made, and then molten steel is cast into the mold to create the entire frame at one time. The latter is to divide the frame into several pieces and manufacture them separately, and then use welding methods to assemble a complete frame.

The advantage of the welding process is that it does not require a complex mold, and the forming process is relatively simple, but the disadvantage is that the workload of welding is larger, and the quality of the weld directly affects the strength of the frame, and there is a great hidden quality hazard. The casting process avoids the defects of the welding process, the only problem is that the cost of manufacturing the mold is very large, and if the production batch is small, it is very uneconomical.

Reading worked for a company that had studied the casting process for frames, but eventually abandoned the process due to the cost of tooling, so it still uses the welding process. He was well aware of the difference between the two processes, so he was shocked when he saw that Lin Chong actually used the casting process.

Li Song explained on the side: "We have fully adopted the casting process. We calculated that the cost of manufacturing a front frame using the welding process was about 220,000 RMB, or 21,000 euros. Switching to the casting process can reduce the cost to 140,000 RMB, or 13,000 euros. This alone was able to reduce the cost of a wind turbine by 8 euros per kilowatt. ”

"However, you didn't factor in the cost of the mold. Lövenvale reminded from the side. He himself is a technical person and has enough understanding of production costs. Li Song said that the cost of the welding frame, he thinks it is more reasonable, although the cost is lower than that of European enterprises, but it is also within the acceptable range. The cost of the casting frame can be as low as 13,000 euros, which is beyond the scope of his common sense, his company has made calculations, and the conclusion is that the cost of the casting frame is more than 30% higher than the welded frame, the main part of which is the allocation of mold costs.

The cost of the casting process is nothing more than three parts: molten steel, mold and labor. Among them, the mold is a one-time input, and after making a set of molds, it can be used repeatedly. If you don't consider the cost of the tool, just calculate the cost of molten steel and labor, the casting frame is very cheap, much lower than the cost of the welded frame. But the cost of making a set of molds is nearly a million euros, and if a set of molds can produce 100 racks, the cost of each frame will reach nearly 10,000 euros, so there is no cost advantage at all.

Li Song just said that the cost of manufacturing a frame with the casting process of Lin Chongfan is 13,000 euros, according to Le Fenweier's view, this is not taking into account the factor of mold apportionment, otherwise, there will be 10,000 euros for the mold apportionment alone, how to calculate the other costs?

Li Song smiled and said, "Mr. Löfenweile, of course we calculated the apportionment of the cost of the mold. Of the 13,000 euros I said, 2,000 euros belong to the distribution of the mold. ”

"It's only 2,000 euros?" Leffenwell frowned, "Is it only 200,000 euros for you to make a mold?"

"No, the cost of our tooling is around 1 million euros. Li Song said.

"Does that mean you can make 500 racks with one mold?" Löfenvale blurted out, and he remembered that Li Song had told them before that Lin Chong now has a production capacity of 1,400 megawatts per year, and is preparing to develop to 4,000 megawatts in a few years. If this goal is true, then Lin Zhong can indeed use the casting process without psychological pressure, and this is the difference between high-volume manufacturing and low-volume manufacturing.

"Our production processes are designed with an annual production capacity of more than 2,000 megawatts. Li Song explained to the crowd, "The accessories we purchase, including gears, hydraulic parts, sensors, motors, etc., are also based on the annual order volume of 2,000 megawatts, so we can enjoy preferential prices." For example, the yaw brake we purchased from Xinmin Hydraulic Machinery Co., Ltd. has a purchase cost of 4,000 euros, which is more than 50% lower than the price in the European market. ”

"Are you telling the truth?, a set of yaw brakes costs only 4,000 euros?" asked Reading in surprise.

"Of course it's true. "If Mr. Reading doesn't believe it, he can go to Xinmin Hydraulics to find out that the quality of the hydraulic yaw brakes they produce is similar to that of European products, but the price is only half of that of European products, which also reduces the cost of our fans by 4 euros per kilowatt." ”

"I see. The faces of the Europeans were full of abruptness and dejection.

The difference of a few euros per kilowatt, it does not seem like much. But if you save a few euros per component, it adds up to a lot of money. Chinese companies are currently quoted at 470 euros per kilowatt, while European companies are around 700 euros, a difference of only 230 euros. According to Li Song, the price difference of 230 euros is really possible.

In fact, the most direct way to make something cheaper is to expand the scale of production. The cost per unit of production of 100 pieces and the production of 1000 pieces is not the same. For example, if you plant an acre of land, it is impossible to buy a tractor to plough the land, and you can only rely on manual ploughing, and the cost can be imagined. If you contract 10,000 acres of land, you can buy a few tractors, and a few operators can easily plough 10,000 acres of land with tractors, and the unit cost will naturally drop significantly.

Previously, China's domestic wind turbine manufacturers were reluctant to spend money on large-scale special processing machinery, special molds, fixtures, etc., and the production efficiency was low, so the unit cost of the wind turbine remained high. A few months ago, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Equipment Industry Company specially summoned the CEOs of various wind turbine manufacturers to the capital and gave them secret instructions, the core of which is to let go of their hands and feet, adjust the process according to the annual production scale of tens of thousands of megawatts, and greatly reduce the cost.

"Mr. Feng, according to this scale, our Linzhong fan will reach an annual production capacity of 4,000 megawatts, what if there is no such a big market in the future?"

At that meeting, Li Song once asked Feng Xiaochen, general manager of the equipment company, this question.

Feng Xiaochen smiled and said, "You can rest assured and boldly do it, Director Wang of the National Development and Reform Commission is sitting here, and he has made a package ticket, what else do you not believe?"

"I'm not unconvinced. Li Song said, "I'm worried, in case we spend a lot of money on process equipment, there are not so many orders, the investment in these process equipment is apportioned to the product, the cost is really a lot." Aren't we planning to fight a price war with the Europeans, if the cost does not fall but rises, we will be blind. ”

"Don't you still believe this?" Feng Xiaochen reprimanded with a smile, and then said: "Ladies and gentlemen, the country's wind power plan is to reach an annual installed capacity of 30,000 megawatts by 2015, which will never change. As for whether all these 30,000 megawatts can fall into the pockets of our Chinese enterprises, it depends on whether you work hard. What the equipment company means is that your companies should seize the time of these few months to upgrade their production capacity. At that time, no matter what your actual production is, the cost will be spread according to the scale of 2,000 megawatts, so that even if the Europeans want to check our production costs, they will not find any flaws.

As long as our prices are low enough, then the domestic wind power market will not be snatched by Europeans, on the contrary, we will also grab the wind power market in Europe and the United States. At that time, there will be 30,000 megawatts in China, and we will grab another 30,000 megawatts abroad, a total of 60,000 megawatts of market, which will be divided by you companies, are you still worried that the cost will not be shared?"

Feng Xiaochen has enough confidence to say these words. In his history, China has indeed taken the opportunity of large-scale wind power development to allow wind turbine companies to expand their production capacity, thereby reducing costs through large-scale production. A few years later, the price of wind turbines in the Chinese market dropped to about 3,000 yuan per kilowatt, which really made the price of cabbage.

After that meeting, the wind turbine companies really began to update the equipment on a large scale, widely adopt new processes, and reduce the unit cost of the fan. More than half of the components of the wind turbine are purchased from outside, and those companies that provide accessories for wind turbine manufacturers have also improved their processes accordingly, using various large-scale production methods to greatly reduce the price of fan accessories.

Among them, there is actually a small flaw, that is, when enterprises calculate the allocation of equipment, they generally overestimate the output. For example, only 1,000 parts are produced, but the company apportions the process cost according to the scale of 10,000 parts, so that the cost of a single part is naturally frighteningly low. But this kind of thing is not clear, I do only produce 1000 parts now, but I will produce next year, I am very optimistic about the production situation next year, is there any problem?

In fact, the optimism of enterprises is also well-founded, the country does have such a large wind power construction plan, enterprises take precautions, in advance to invest in equipment, why not?