Mar 19 2008
American Superconductor Corporation, a leading energy technologies company, today announced that it has received new orders for wind turbine core electrical components and full wind turbine electrical systems from companies in Canada and China that are in the process of adopting and scaling up manufacturing of wind turbines designed by AMSC’s wholly owned subsidiary, AMSC Windtec. These latest orders bring the total amount of wind power to be supported by AMSC products to 6.6 gigawatts, equivalent to approximately seven percent of the worldwide installed base of wind generated electricity as of December 2007.
“This series of new orders for wind turbine core electrical components further validates our AMSC Windtec business model,” said AMSC founder and Chief Executive Officer Greg Yurek. “AMSC Windtec helps to quickly establish new wind turbine manufacturers by providing wind turbine designs and helping with local sourcing of core wind turbine components. Once our customers go into production of wind turbines, we then sell them the sophisticated core electrical components necessary to operate these systems successfully and efficiently. The sale of wind turbine core electrical components has, in fact, become a very large fraction of our business. With the customers we signed in 2007 now beginning to order core electrical components to meet their wind turbine manufacturing needs and new licensees and development partners on the near-term horizon, we expect our wind power business to continue to grow and diversify going forward.”
AMSC’s wind turbine core electrical components include the company’s proprietary PowerModule™ power converters and enable reliable, high-performance wind turbine operation by controlling power flows, regulating voltage, monitoring system performance and controlling the pitch of wind turbine blades to maximize efficiency.
Yurek added that approximately 65 percent of AMSC’s revenues in fiscal 2007, which ends March 31, 2008, are expected to be from the global wind industry. “This fiscal year, roughly 70 percent of our sales are international, with the lion’s share of these sales coming from the wind industry,” he said. “With the wind industry expected to continue to grow at double-digit rates for many years to come, we expect sales to this market will remain a large fraction of AMSC’s revenue makeup - even as we continue to ramp up sales of our other products to the power grid market worldwide.”
Dongfang Steam Turbine Works (“DTC”), the third largest wind turbine manufacturer in China according to the China Wind Energy Association, has placed its first order for complete electrical systems for four 2.5 megawatt (MW) wind turbines it plans to manufacture and test in early 2009. AMSC Windtec is developing a portfolio of 2.5 megawatt (MW) wind turbines under a contract it received from DTC in March 2007.
With 7,000 employees, DTC is one of the top 100 machinery builders in China and a key equipment provider in Sichuan Province of China. DTC entered the wind power market in 2004 with the production of 1.5 MW systems utilizing a wind turbine design provided by a third party. The company plans to commence series production of the AMSC Windtec designed 2.5 MW wind turbines by the end of 2009.
AAER, Inc., Canada’s first wind turbine manufacturer, has placed an order for core electrical components for an additional 20 of the 1.5 MW wind turbines it is currently scaling up to manufacture under a license from a third party. This order follows close on the heels of an initial order from AAER for 10 sets of full electric systems in January 2008 for the 1.5 MW wind turbines. In October 2007, AMSC announced that AAER had also licensed AMSC Windtec’s proprietary 2.0 MW SuperGEAR™ wind turbine design, which AAER plans to start manufacturing in 2009.
AMSC also announced today that it has received an order for 20 additional sets of wind turbine core electrical components from CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Research Institute Co., Ltd. (CSR-ZELRI), which is located in Zhuzhou City in the Hunan province of China. Including this latest order, CSR-ZELRI has ordered more than 50 sets of core electrical components from AMSC to date. CSR-ZELRI will use these core electrical components in the manufacture of a 1.65 MW wind turbine design it licensed from AMSC Windtec in January 2007. CSR-ZELRI expects to begin shipping wind turbines to customers in mid 2008 and expects to manufacture more than 100 turbines in 2009.