American Superconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: AMSC), announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Windtec™, has signed a multi-million-dollar wind energy system joint development contract to jointly develop 3 and 5 megawatt wind Energy systems with Sinovel Wind Corporation Limited. The order significantly expands Windtec’s business with Sinovel. Since 2005, Sinovel has ordered electrical components from Windtec for 785 wind energy systems rated at 1.5 megawatts (MW).
Based in Beijing, Sinovel plans to begin series production of 3 MW systems during 2009 and 5 MW systems the following year.
“AMSC’s Windtec business enabled Sinovel to quickly establish itself in the wind power market,” said Han Junliang, Chairman and President of Sinovel. “We believe the 3 and 5 MW systems we will jointly develop with Windtec will allow Sinovel to grow its market share and position us as a technology leader in the industry. We look forward to benefiting from our expanded relationship with Windtec as we continue to implement our plan to manufacture 500 wind energy systems in 2007, 800 in 2008 and reach an annual capacity of 1,000 wind energy systems in 2010.”
Since its founding in 1995, Windtec, Austria, has become the leading engineering company involved in developing complete electrical systems for wind turbine applications. Their products include control, pitch and variable-speed power electrical systems as well as the complete development of wind turbines.
Under the contract AMSC also has a prior delivery right to sell future electrical components under the same conditions as other suppliers to Sinovel for the wind energy systems covered under the contract, creating a substantial follow-on business opportunity for AMSC.
According to a recent report from the Global Wind Energy Council, China’s installed base of wind generated electricity grew by 107% in 2006 alone to 2,600 MW. Li Junfeng of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industry Association (CREIA) stated: “Thanks to the Renewable Energy law, the Chinese market has grown substantially in 2006, and this growth is expected to continue and speed up. According to the list of approved projects and those under construction, more than 1,500 MW will be installed in 2007. The goal for wind power in China by the end of 2010 is 5,000 MW, which according to our estimations will already be reached well ahead of time.”
With the aid of Windtec, China will have a major player in the wind power market. Major components can be made much more economically in China than in the West. This contract will allow AMSC/Windtec to become a much larger player in the wind power market by gaining a larger income stream for their specialized electrical components. Sounds like a win, win situation.
Bigger is better and cheaper per kwh.
But consider this? A small 3 kw wind machine powering every suitable home or business location in the US would be a good thing too.
Featuring: Really flexible blades about 10 feet long that bend instead of break. And simple grid synchonized electronics.
All molded plastic stamped out on an assembley line. For 300 bucks per copy. those could be installed and grid connected for 1500 dollars per kw of real capacity. No capacity factor BS involved.
But these huge machines? I think breakthroughs to under 1000 dollars per kw could be attained with large scale mass production and installation.
It is going to be important for the government to set aside conservation land in the high wind areas of the prairie states that can be leased at reasonable prices to wind power producers.
Otherwise land speculation will build a new OPEC, with foreign government corporations taking major stakes. Chinese government owned corporations are already trying to monopolize Canadian tar sands oil.
Posted by: amazingdrx | March 16, 2007 at 08:56 AM
The organic model for large structures that resist the destructive force of wind, while harvesting renewable energy (in this case solar energy) are trees.
Constructed from small efficiently produced units, cells, the whole structure arranged to bend instead of break.
Wind generator tensegrity structures, like communications towers, could use the same design principles.
Very light tower units, the cells, of welded steel. Mass produced, then assembled into huge wind harvesting structures, 50 megawatt scale structures.
intead of blades as on the current large wind designs. Roller furling sail wing "blades". That automatically adjust their surface area to the wind speed.
The sail wing "blades" deployed within the steel tower units. Curved sides on the tower units to form the blade shape.
The current size of the largest wind machine blades are running up against the "King Kong" engineering limit. The bigger you go the heavier you go by an exponential factor. So King kong would crush himself.
This hollow frame design is the answer. The amount of wind load on each part is controllable with the roller furling sails.
Wind load goes up with the cube of wind speed, just like the weight of king kong goes up with the cube of height. Relieve the wind load by making it controllable and the structure can be much lighter, alleviating the load due to weight and centripital acceleration.
Crazy Jules Vernism, hehey.
Posted by: amazingdrx | March 16, 2007 at 09:23 AM
amazingdrx writes:
"A small 3 kw wind machine powering every suitable home or business location in the US would be a good thing too."
The key word here is "suitable". Wind energy increases with the cube of its velocity. For any given level of global turbine manufacturing output, the way to deploy it that maximizes wind energy harvest is to install them where the wind is best. Even if they're out in the boonies, the higher electricity production dwarfs any transmission losses.
Posted by: John F. | March 16, 2007 at 10:02 AM
That is assuming locations that average 12 mph or more are suitable for these small units. With solar covering summer and wind winter, in many locations these designs are complimentary. Then when grid connected a more constant renewable supply results.
Biogas digestion from manure, garbage, and farm waste can also fill in gaps in this sort of distributed supply.
But I like remote high wind (hopefully conservation land)areas like the great plains and floating offshore for huge wind machines.
Posted by: amazingdrx | March 16, 2007 at 11:12 AM
I think it is worth saying that Ultracapacitors are used to trim the blades on the large wind turbines. You have a number of articles on ultracapacitors under energy storage.
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Posted by: gerry thompson | September 23, 2009 at 02:34 AM
Is it possible to have king kong jumping around and surviving his
various crash landings? Why not? Please explain this in terms of
atomic physics using natural units (planck units). An answer might
discuss the force of the impact of King Kong (use approximate
equations) and the chemical bonds in his bones. Ignore factors of 2,
pi, and such pesty constants.
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