Three Budding Wind Turbine Players in a Growing Market

December 24, 2006 – Vol. 11 No. 40

THREE BUDDING WIND TURBINE PLAYERS IN A GROWING MARKET.

Chile. Argentina. Cuba. Siberia. Pretty much all of Canada. Greenland. Australia and New Zealand. Take a trot around the globe and you’ll find plenty of spots where wind resources are either under utilized or not used at all.

Given that there’s wind all over that’s not being put to work generating power, and a world that really should be cutting its greenhouse gas emissions to the bone, there are growing and continuing opportunities in the wind energy business. And there will be for a long time to come.

Being in the wind energy business really means being in the turbine business. Wind park developers will come and go, but the turbines will have to be available for purchase and once planted on site will need to be updated and maintained to keep working for decades.

Fortunately there are still many ready to jump into the turbine business and give it a whirl, as it where.

Since mid 2006, Composite Technology Corporation (CTC), an Irvine, California maker of specialty electrical transmission cables, has owned DeWind, a not well known European wind turbine manufacturer. The DeWind technology features a kind of automatic transmission between the rotor and the generator to smooth out the variations in rotor speed due to variations in wind speed.

Being intimately familiar with the power grid (selling the cables to build it), Composite was also certainly familiar with the power sources supplying the grid - such as wind turbines - so the DeWind/CTC match-up must have seemed a good idea. As of June of 2006 CTC had orders for nearly 1300 turbines, according to the company. Some of those are supposed to ship in 2007.

Now the company has new model installed and ready for testing at the German Wind Energy Institute (DEWI) - Offshore and Certification Centre (OCC) test site in Cuxhaven, Germany. The 2.0 megawatt turbine is there to undergo certification testing. Certification is expected in early 2007.

American Superconductor (AMSC) is a Westborough, Massachusetts maker of high-temperature superconducting electrical cables, power stabilization products for the grid as well as large, rotating superconducting machinery: really big electric motors like those the US Navy is purchasing to drive ships across the oceans.

AMSC jumped into the wind turbine business in November 2006 with the acquisition of Windtec, a privately-owned wind turbine and component design, development and engineering firm based in Klagenfurt, Austria. Windtec designs wind turbine systems from the ground up, often licensing its designs to turbine manufacturers. The company gets an upfront fee plus royalties for each turbine built.

Windtec has been targeting heavy equipment manufacturers in countries such as the Czech Republic and India to help meet demand for locally-built wind turbines. (Because of their size and difficulty in shipping - the long blades in particular - it often makes economic sense to build turbines locally, near the sites where they will be installed.)

Lagerwey of Holland had been another under-performer in the wind turbine business compared with the big boys like Vestas, Gamesa, GE and Enercon. (Yet not too underperforming, Lagerwey had over 1000 turbines planted around the world as of 2003.)

Since midyear 2004 Lagerwey’s technology has been owned by Americas Wind Energy Corporation (AWEC) of Toronto, Canada and European partner EWT. The companies will focus on manufacturing 750 and 900 kilowatt turbines with the 900 kilowatt given special attention in the North American market. EWT markets the turbines elsewhere under the Directwind trade name.

AWEC has just announced it has installed a second machine in Digby Neck, Nova Scotia. (One of those underutilized windy spots.) The AWEC technology features a direct drive generator. There is no gearbox between the rotor and the generator: the generator spins at the same speed as the rotor. The gearboxless design reduces maintenance and the number of component parts.

All these companies - depending on the skill of there management and sales teams - should be busy for years to come. The demand for greenhouse-gas-free energy is growing; wind is still the cheapest available.

Visit Composite Technology at http://www.compositetechcorp.com/ American Superconductor at http://www.amsuper.com/ and Americas Wind Energy http://www.awewind.com/