More China IP Communications Stories

American Superconductor Corporation, a global energy technologies company, reportedly has amended its multi-year contract with Beijing-based Sinovel Wind.

 

The new contract will allow the Chinese wind turbine manufacturer to address the increased demand in China for its 1.5 megawatt wind turbines.

 

AMSC was signed in January to ship core electrical components for Sinovel’s 1.5 MW wind turbines through the end of December 2011. The terms have been amended now and under the new terms, AMSC will increase its core electrical component shipments to Sinovel in calendar year 2009 and 2010. Also, AMSC will complete all shipments by the end of April 2011.

 

The new contract also includes several AMSC’s wind-specific PowerModule PM3000W power converters that are optimized for wind turbine applications. The previous contract included a larger fraction of PowerModule PM1000 power converters. The PM3000W help Sinovel include in its wind turbines grid-friendly features such as Low Voltage Ride Through.

 

AMSC's proprietary PowerModule power converters help reliable, high-performance wind turbine operation. These converters achieve this by controlling power flows, regulating voltage, monitoring system performance and controlling the pitch of wind turbine blades to maximize efficiency. This power converter upgrade has resulted in an increase of the overall contract value to more than $470 million.

 

Greg Yurek, founder and CEO of AMSC, said that Sinovel is growing with the Chinese wind industry and has expanded its footprint in the nation. He said that the increase in shipments to Sinovel was driven by recent wind turbine orders received by them for new large-scale wind farms in China.

 

AMSC expects Sinovel to continually grow rapidly throughout the next decade, and thus give rise to new orders for their core electrical components for 2011 and beyond.

 

AMSC was in news earlier this year when its wholly owned AMSC Windtec subsidiary licensed its proprietary two megawatt doubly-fed induction wind turbine design to Inox Wind.

 

Inox now has the right to manufacture and sell the wind turbines globally and intends to begin series production of the 2 MW wind turbines in 2010.