Jan 27 2011
American Superconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: AMSC), a global power technologies company, today announced that it has received a $9 million follow-on order for the supply of wind turbine electrical control systems from Inox Wind Limited (IWL), part of India’s Inox Group of Companies.
In August of 2010, Inox placed an initial order for 17 of AMSC’s wind turbine electrical control systems, which, as the “brains” of the wind turbine, monitor and control its operation and the flow of zero-emission electricity to the power grid. The systems are being utilized in 2 megawatt (MW) doubly-fed induction wind turbines that Inox is manufacturing under a global AMSC Windtec™ license.
“India has one of the fastest growing economies in the world,” said Devansh Jain, Director of Inox Wind Limited. “When considering our rapid urbanization and industrialization combined with our need to reduce pollution and increase electricity generation, it is imperative that we continue to promote and produce zero-emission electricity from sources such as wind. Our partnership with AMSC has enabled us to enter full-scale manufacturing quite rapidly, taking us one step closer to our goal of becoming a leader in the global wind power marketplace.”
Inox Wind Limited (IWL) currently has the ability to manufacture 400 of its 2 MW wind turbines annually at its facility in Una (Himachal Pradesh) India. Today, approximately one-third of India’s 1.1 billion people do not have access to electricity. Demand for electric power in India from wind and other energy sources is expected to continue to grow strongly for decades to come.
“India is expected to be a major market for clean technology solutions, and Inox Wind is well positioned to be a leader in this sector,” said AMSC founder and Chief Executive Officer Greg Yurek. “Inox has rapidly established a wind turbine manufacturing capacity of 800 MW per year and, with this new $9 million order, Inox is becoming one of our key wind turbine manufacturing customers.”
India had 11,800 MW of wind power installed at the end of March 2010 according to the Indian Wind Energy Association, making it the world's fifth largest wind power market. IHS Emerging Energy Research expects that India will more than double its installed capacity to nearly 24,000 MW by the end of 2015 and will triple its installed base to more than 34,000 MW by the end of 2020. According to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), the global wind power installed base is expected to more than double from 158,505 MW in 2009 to more than 347,000 MW by the end of 2013.
AMSC’s wind turbine power electronics and control systems include the company's proprietary PowerModule™ power converters, pitch and yaw converters, SCADA systems and integrated control systems. They enable reliable, high-performance wind turbine operation by controlling power flows, regulating voltage, monitoring system performance, controlling the pitch of wind turbine blades and the yaw of the turbines to maximize efficiency.