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Figure 5-2 Number of full-time equivalents and percentage of company revenue in PV and OWP
We also asked the firms about when they first started up activities related to the offshore wind and
solar PV industries. Figure 5-3 shows that there was little activity, in terms of new firm entry, before
the year 2000, and that following a surge in activity in the period between 2005 and 2012 activity was
reduced in the subsequent years. This is particularly visible for the offshore wind firms, and may be
related to changing activity levels in the petroleum industry in the same period (Normann 2015).
Figure 5-3 Annual number of firms starting activity in OWP and PV (1990-2014)
5.1.1 Supply chains
Both the offshore wind and photovoltaics industries consist of a variety of firms that supply different
products and services . An offshore wind farm is put together by three groups of manufactured
components: topside, foundations and electrical infrastructure. The turbine is the main topside
component and the single most expensive part of the OWP value chain, representing approximately
one-third of the total costs of an offshore wind farm. This is however a significantly smaller share than
2 Many of the firms reported to have activities in several categories in the supply chain. For the purpose of our analysis, we placed these
firms in only one category in the supply chain (see sectio or more details about this process).
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
<1 1-4 5-25 >25
% of firms
Number of FTEs dedicated to OWP and PV (2014)
OWP (n=100) PV (n=45)
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
1-4 % 5-20 % 21-80 % 81-100 %
% of firms
Activity in OWP and PV as % of total revenue (2014)
OWP (n=97) PV (n=44)
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
1990199119921993199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014
Number of firms
OWP PV