AMSC Receives Initial Systems Order from India's Inox Wind

American Superconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: AMSC) announced that it has received an initial order for 17 wind turbine electrical control systems from Inox Wind Limited (IWL), part of India’s Inox Group of Companies.

The electrical control systems will be deployed in 2-megawatt (MW), doubly-fed induction wind turbines licensed from AMSC’s AMSC Windtec subsidiary under a contract announced in May 2009. Inox recently erected and commissioned its first 2 MW wind turbine and has already begun volume production.

Devansh Jain, Director of Inox Wind Limited, said: “We intend to be a market leader in the high-growth wind power market in India and to eventually become an exporter of wind turbines to other parts of the world. With our first wind turbine now commissioned and our manufacturing plants operational, we are on track to begin full-scale production later this year.”

According to a report issued in June 2010 by industry research firm Emerging Energy Research (EER), India had nearly 11,000 MW of wind power installed at the end of 2009, making it the world’s fifth largest wind power market. EER 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.

With a presence across India, the $2 billion Inox Group has a diverse line of businesses and employs approximately 5,000 people. IWL was incorporated in 2009 to cater to global markets for wind energy products and associated services. IWL has manufacturing facilities in Ahmedabad (Gujarat) and Una (Himachal Pradesh) India. In addition to its wind turbine manufacturing operations, the Inox group owns and operates several wind farms in India.

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.

AMSC also licenses wind turbine designs to manufacturing companies in China and South Korea. And earlier this month, the company purchased a 25% stake in the UK-based company Blade Dynamics.