AMSC signs additional contracts in Australia

AMSC D-VAR Systems in Australia support wind farms with grid interconnection compliance, reactive power compensation, voltage regulation, and power factor correction, enabling South Australia projects like Hallett 4 and Waterloo to meet stringent network codes.

American Superconductor Corporation (AMSC), a global energy technologies company, announced that its D-VAR grid interconnection solution has been ordered for two additional wind farms under construction in Australia.

These are the 50th and 51st wind farms to have purchased AMSC’s D-VAR systems worldwide, including orders in Canada and China as well, and AMSC’s 6th and 7th deployments in Australia.

Both of the D-VAR solutions included in these new contracts will be deployed to enable wind farms to meet local grid interconnection requirements, and AMSC’s complementary SolarTie solution supports similar objectives for solar projects as well. AMSC will provide a D-VAR system to Suzlon Energy Australia Pty. Ltd., a subsidiary of India’s Suzlon Energy Limited, for the 132 megawatt (MW) AGL Hallett 4 (North Brown Hill) Wind Farm being erected outside of Jamestown, South Australia.

AMSC also will provide a D-VAR system to Consolidated Power Projects Australia Pty Ltd. for Roaring 40s Renewable Energy Pty Ltd.’s 111 MW Waterloo Wind Farm currently under construction approximately 100 kilometers north of Adelaide in South Australia. Both D-VAR systems will be delivered within the next six months, as utilities pursue initiatives such as SCE’s Circuit of the Future to modernize distribution networks.

Customers can utilize AMSC’s D-VAR solutions to provide voltage regulation, power factor correction and post-contingency assistance to help prevent voltage collapse on the power grid, as highlighted by offshore grid access milestones in the sector, to which the wind farms are connected. These solutions enable wind farm developers to meet grid interconnection requirements adopted in countries such as Australia.

“In order to help facilitate the integration of electricity generated from renewable sources of energy, Australia is requiring that the reactive compensation of wind power plants be similar to that of traditional generation plants,” said Timothy Poor, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Business Development at AMSC. “As a result, we are seeing a growing pipeline of opportunities for our best-in-class D-VAR solution, including supply to Sinovel Wind across global markets. With Australia recently setting a target to derive 20 percent of its electricity needs from renewable sources by 2020, we believe this will be a sizable market for AMSC for many years to come.”

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