UK wind firm eyes growing US small-turbine market
Loughborough-based wind turbine firm Evance hopes to grab a slice of the fast-growing US small-wind market with a new distributor.
DC Power Systems of the US will market Evance’s Iskra R9000 5-kilowatt turbine in the US through its network of 250 dealers. The distributor expects home owners, light commercial sites and agricultural sites to be among the first to buy such turbines.
Evance has also appointed CIRKEL ENERGI as its distributor in Denmark, strengthening its European reach following May’s announcement of new distributors in Germany and Poland.
The American Wind Energy Association’s (AWEA) “Small Wind Turbine Global Study” (for the year ending 2008) projects a 30-fold growth in installed small-wind capacity in the US within five years. Much of this estimated growth will be spurred by the new eight-year, 30-per cent federal Investment Tax Credit augmented in February 2009.
Michael Miller, wind power sales manager for DC Power Systems, said of Evance’s Iskra R9000, “We chose the turbine because of its elegant variable pitching mechanism, overall engineering and construction quality and suitability for the US market.”
Evance says its new Iskra R9000 turbine heralds a significant advance in efficiency, reliability, durability, corrosion resistance, and reduced installation time and cost. The turbine is an evolution of Evance’s Iskra AT5-1 and has been developed over two years, including continuous monitoring and evaluation on Evance’s test sites, and has been instrumented and measured according to IEC standards.
