VRB and American Superconductor get more wind orders

American Superconductor (NASDAQ: AMSC) today acknowledged growth in orders from the global wind power market in two specific areas.

The company’s PowerModule™ power electronic converters have been ordered by VRB Power Systems of Vancouver, British Columbia and will be integrated into its energy storage systems.

Storage technology developed by VRB Power has the ability to store excess wind-generated energy when the demand is low, and release it when the demand exceeds the available wind generated power, VRB says.

The storage system has the potential to increase the supply reliability of wind energy and reduce the cost of the reserve requirements from generation plants.

This is a new application for PowerModules in the renewable energy space and expands the breadth of AMSC’s offerings in the wind industry, AMSC said.

AMSC also today disclosed another new order for its D-VAR® reactive compensation product—in this latest case to enable connection of a wind farm in Scotland to the local power grid.

AMSC also reported an order for a six megaVAR (MVAR) D-VAR system from Scottish Hydro Contracting for the Millennium wind farm under construction in Scotland. This system will help regulate voltage so the 40-megawatt (MW) wind farm can meet the United Kingdom's grid interconnection standards.

The Millennium wind farm will be the ninth wind farm located in the United Kingdom and the 26th wind farm worldwide to utilize AMSC’s D-VAR solution. Delivery of the system is expected in the second half of calendar 2007.

AMSC says it now has an installed base and orders for D-VAR and PowerModule solutions to serve nearly 3,000 megawatts (MW) of wind power worldwide, triple the amount it served 12 months ago.

AMSC develops and sells a wide range of products and solutions based on power electronic systems and high temperature superconductor (HTS) wires that dramatically improve the efficiency, reliability and quality of electricity during its generation, transmission, distribution and use.

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