June 30, 2008
Reliable wind power turbines in demand
Analysis of:
Edison Unit Cancels Suzlon Order | online.wsj.com
This analysis is solely the work of the author. It has not been edited or endorsed by GLG.
Implications: After numerous wind turbine blade failures (cracking) of their Suzlon (India) wind turbines , Mission Energy, the non-regulated arm of Southern California Edision cancelled a follow-on order of wind turbines from Suzlon. Since Suzlon delivered the previous order of their turbines with warranties and contractual terms to reimburse Mission Energy in case of lost production and/or project development delays, Suzlon received a real financial blow and will struggle to recover. Reliable wind turbines are now in demand.
Analysis: Suzlon has grown rapidly by acquisition of European wind turbine and wind turbine component companies and putting large manufacturing plants into Europe, India and other locations. In the drive for global supremacy, Suzlon also acquired recently the gearbox manufacturer Hanson, being the main gearbox supplier to Vestas of Denmark, one of the more reliable wind turbine companies. In addition, Suzlon was pushing the envelop of power capacity from 1.5 mega watts (MW) to over 6 MW, even they knew their basic blade design was not state of the art. To solve this deficiency Suzlon acquired about 75% of the leading European blade designer ERpower of Germany. However, Suzlon can not get access to their blade design drawings under German corporate law until they have full control of the company. Suzlon is desperately trying yo get control as fast as possible to resolve their exposer to the Mission Energy penalties.
Analysis: Suzlon has grown rapidly by acquisition of European wind turbine and wind turbine component companies and putting large manufacturing plants into Europe, India and other locations. In the drive for global supremacy, Suzlon also acquired recently the gearbox manufacturer Hanson, being the main gearbox supplier to Vestas of Denmark, one of the more reliable wind turbine companies. In addition, Suzlon was pushing the envelop of power capacity from 1.5 mega watts (MW) to over 6 MW, even they knew their basic blade design was not state of the art. To solve this deficiency Suzlon acquired about 75% of the leading European blade designer ERpower of Germany. However, Suzlon can not get access to their blade design drawings under German corporate law until they have full control of the company. Suzlon is desperately trying yo get control as fast as possible to resolve their exposer to the Mission Energy penalties.
Basic design flaws as well as risky site locations are the main cause of wind turbine failures. The recent case of gearbox failures of several Clipper wind turbines points to a basic design flaw and of course, gear manufacturing quality problems. While most wind turbine companies use multistage planetary gearboxes to increase the low wind turbine shaft speed to higher shaft speeds required for the electrical generators driven by the high speed output shaft of the gear box. As Suzlon, Clipper was trying to push the envelop of power density up to 7 MW and selected - as the only wind turbine company in the world - a for poster gearbox with for generators driven by the four high speed output shafts. In general process and industrial applications do not select four poster gear boxes for high capacities, being air or power deliveries.
Of course, the one of the best design has been developed and successfully market by Enercon of Germany. The unique design does not use any gearbox, but the wind turbine directly drives an annular synchronous generator at variable speed. Precise grid power transfer is achieved with state of the art electrical frequency and phase angle control units, including required transformers per the grid specifications.
Besides the problems created by Suzlon and Clipper, the rest of the wind power companies are conservative and strive for maximum reliability and performance. It should not be surprising that the leading global power plant manufacturers such as GE, Siemens and Mitsubishi now take wind power very serous and provide reliable and proven designs. They also do not push the power density envelop beyond 2.5 MW. As a matter of fact GE has 45% of the US wind power market with a class of 1.5 MW wind turbines. Mission Energy just placed an order with GE for 100 wind turbines to solve the Suzlon outages.
All the major power plant manufacturers have in-house advanced tech-nology, design and manufacturing expertise and have test facilities to qualify their multiple outside component vendors for blades, gearboxes and generators.
Of course, we can not forget solid industrial companies like Vestas from Denmark and Gamesa of Spain, both having a large global presence and produce reliable and efficient wind turbines. However, they do not have the financial and power plant market strength like Ge, Siemens and Mitsubishi.
Finally one has to put wind turbines in perspective with technically related industrial products such as the turbo-prop engines. While the wind turbine generates power, the turbo-prop receives drive power from a jet fuel fired gas turbine, they do have the same drive elements requiring high precision components and complete freedom from system vibration problems. For operation and maintenance the turbo-prop has a great advantage: the pilot controls the engine and the ground crew checks the components after each flight. Wind turbines have to b built much more rugged and reliable since no pilot and/or ground crews are available all the time in remote areas. A real challenge for the wind turbines.
In summary, the major players understand the reliability issues and do provide excellent products. Pushing the MW envelop will require time and/or new designs such as pioneered by Enercon. By the way, GE has a cross licensing agreement with Enercon. All reliable wind turbine companies are sold out until 2010 and are trying to increase production facilities to meet the increasing renewable energy demand as pushed by DOE in the US.
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