Nordex U.S. Turbine, Sierra Leone INvestment, €2M to Modvion

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Nordex has announced the N169 5. X turbine, specifically designed for the American market. Infinity Power, a joint venture between Egypt's Infinity and Abu Dhabi's Masdar, has outlined a plan to develop one gigawatt of renewable energy projects in Sierra Leone by 2033. Modvion has received a €2 million investment from CMPC Ventures, the innovation arm of the Chilean forestry company CMPC. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com. First up, German wind turbine manufacturer Nordex has announced a new addition to its product line, specifically designed for the U. S. market. The N169 5. X turbine boasts a rotor diameter of 169 meters and can generate up to 5. 5 megawatts of power. This new model is optimized for regions with low to medium wind speeds and limited grid capacity. Okay, Phil. Nordex must be seeing a market develop in the United States and they developed a turbine for that. What's their ability to build that turbine in the United States? Philip Totaro: First of all, let's look at why they're doing this in the first place. So, About six or seven years ago, I had spoken to some of their product folks and said, Hey, look at this Acciona three megawatt, 140 meter rotor product that they had. And this was just after the merger, before they started designing this Delta platform that they got. That product, fit a gaping hole in the US market where they needed something low wind speed at a higher average power rating than, the 1. x and, the stuff that we had in the market. And it's actually what led GE to also go in that direction and develop something that was a 3 megawatt 140. It evolved into a 3. 6 154. Vestas launched last year, and they've been installing recently the V163 4. 5. So, this new Nordax turbine is based off of their Delta 4000 platform, which, for those that don't know, that's their N149, their N163, 155. That's between, 4. 5 and, and five megawatts. What they're doing with this is besides having a longer rotor, which gives them access to lower wind speed sites, they're leveraging the. Supply chain infrastructure that's already in place. So they've got, generators, they got electrical equipment converters, controllers, et cetera, that fit that kind of, 4 to 5 megawatt product range where they'd be able to leverage that supply chain for this product. They are, probably going to be building these in addition to what they already publicly announced with restarting their factory in Iowa. They're probably going to be building these in Iowa as well and it looks like they will be able to take advantage of some of the domestic content. Bonuses for the production tax credit and potentially even some of the Manufacturing tax credits as well. So I think all in all a great fit for a market need. Joel Saxum: And this comes at the same time as Nordex is making moves in the United States outside of offering this new product They also input a new CEO of Nordex is North American operations Manav Sharma on June 1st of this year. So, Nordex making some moves,