Global Wind Power Services Market, Forecast to 2025

The global wind services market is expected to be worth $25 billion by 2025, up from $9 billion in 2016, driven by an ageing installed base in Europe and North America (including a significant potential for repowering projects) and substantial new capacity additions in Asia-Pacific. There will also be incremental innovations that will drive revenue. Of total global revenues, 45.9% will be contributed by North America and Europe in 2025, while China will account for 38% of total revenue. At a country level, besides the top four countries (China, the US, Germany, and India), new investment in Brazil, France, Spain, and the UK drives growth. Despite a growing preference for in-house services (as wind farm operators look for ways to minimise costs), a majority of wind services will continue to be outsourced to OEMs, or at the very least they are supporting in-house servicing activity. Major wind farm operators are reaching a situation where the size of the asset base they have outside of warranty makes investing in in-house capabilities viable. In 2016, 280GW of wind capacity was outside of the warranty period; this will have reached 620GW by 2025.

Pressure on capex and opex costs will continue to build as wind farm operators look to minimse costs to compete in subsidy free projects – recent projects have shown what is achievable. The biggest uncertainty for wind farm operators as the feed-in tariff era ends in Europe is electricity pricing – less certainty in revenues makes new investment and cost decisions harder to take. Significant recent M&A activity driving consolidation – more is likely to exploit economies of scale and drive operational efficiency – also at the component level. At the same time reverse engineering enables more to compete and new participants could well emerge to take the place of those that have been acquired (service). Collaboration the industry watchword – the power of OEMs is weakening, but wind farm operators are aware of the benefits of working with wind OEMs for the future.

Consolidation in the industry is set to continue, with wind turbine OEMs acquiring ISPs in order to try and defend market share and as part of a wider multi-brand strategy to enable them to service competing brands. However, many acquisitions are likely to retain their branding to preserve the independent profile. Guaranteed availability and real-time access to performance data are increasingly present in the market and gradually featuring as key elements in wind servicing contracts.