Alstom Wind

GE Offshore Wind is a joint venture with Alstom and a subsidiary of GE Vernova, created in 2015 when most of Alstom's electrical power and generation assets were acquired by General Electric. GE's stake in the joint venture is 50% plus 1 share.

Formerly known as Alstom Wind, originally Alstom Ecotècnia, the company was the wind power company of energy infrastructure company Alstom, within its 'Power' operating division, from 2010 to 2015. The company originated as Ecotècnia S.c.c.l., a Spanish wind power equipment manufacturing and installation company established in 1981, acquired by Alstom 2007 for €350 million.

The subsidiary's main product is the 14MW Haliade-X offshore wind turbine, amongst the most powerful on Earth.

History

Ecotècnia, 1987-2007

Ecotècnia was a manufacturer and installer of wind turbines established in 1981, headquartered in Barcelona, Spain. In 1999 it became part of the Basque-based cooperative Mondragon Corporation.

The company's first wind generator was a 30 kW machine, developed by 1984 with funding assistance from the Spanish Science Ministry. In 1991 the company developed a 150 kW machine, and in 1992 won its first commercial project - for fifty 150 kW turbines at Tarifa, Spain. The particular demands of installing wind turbines in mountainous regions in Spain which included poor road access and blustery (high turbulence) conditions led to specific design features of Ecotècnia's turbines - including a modular construction of the turbine (three components: rotor and shaft; mainframe and yaw system; and the drive train - each less than 30t), as well as isolation of the gearbox from the main drive, reducing non-torque gearbox loads.

In the first half of the 1990s the company installed wind farms using its ''ECO20'' 150 kW model, from 1995 to 2000 the company's primary models were the ''ECO44'' (640 kW) and ''ECO48'' (750 kW) models. After 2003 most of the company's installations used its 1.67MW IEC 61400 class II ''ECO74'', and class IIIA ''ECO80'', three blade turbine models; both typically used a mechanically isolated Winergy AG PEAB 4390.2 planetary gearbox driving a doubly fed induction generator (typically ABB, Siemens, Winergy sourced) with IGBT inverter control, driven by individually pitch controlled blades manufactured by LM Wind Power.

The majority of its installations were in Spain, with approximately 10% in other countries including Portugal, France, Italy as well as installations in Japan and India.

In 2005 the company's estimate world market share (by installed capacity) was 2.1%. By 2007 the company had installed over wind farms with over 1GW total of rate power; the company had increased the power output of its wind turbine offering from 30 kW in 1984 to 1.67MW by 2003.

In mid 2007 Alstom acquired Ecotècnia for 350 million euro. By late 2007 the company employed over 800 people, with sales of approximately €400 million pa., and operated wind turbine assembly plants in Somozas and Buñuel, other sites at Rio del Pozo (control panels) and Coreses (tower manufacturing).Alstom and Ecotècnia, June 2008, "Current Footprint", pp.26-7 The company also manufactured small scale autonomous energy systems for isolated locations (tradename 'CICLOPS') comprising windgenerator (10 kW), photovoltaic solar source (2 to 10 kW), generator, battery and inverter, and was active in small scale photovoltaic cell installation (factory Pla de Santa Maria.).

Alstom Wind, 2007-2015

The first ''ECO100'' 3 MW wind turbine was formally inaugurated at the Vieux Moulin wind farm ( Pithiviers, Paris, France) 1 October 2009.

The company was renamed ''Alstom Wind S.L.'' in April 2010.

In 2010 Alstom began construction of a turbine nacelle factory in Amarillo, USA, completed in mid 2011. In November 2011 a 300MW per year capacity manufacturing plant in Camaçari near Salvador, Bahia, Brazil was formally opened.

In March 2012 a prototype of Alstom Haliade 150 6 MW offshore turbine was formally inaugurated; the turbine was developed for large scale offshore wind projects off the French coast; in January 2011 Alstom joined a consortium led by EDF Energies Nouvelles as turbine supplier (also including DONG Energy, Nass & Wind, WPD Offshore) to bid for proposed offshore wind farms in France of 6GW capacity. The ''Haliade 150'' turbine was a development of the previous mechanically isolated transmission designs developed by Ecotècnia; the gearbox driven electrically generator was omitted and replaced with a gearless direct drive permanent magnet synchronous generator designed for higher efficiency and greater reliability with fewer moving parts. The turbine uses 73.5m turbine blades from LM Wind Power.

In April 2012 the French state awarded an EDF/DONG Energy/Alstom consortium three contracts for offshore wind farms (Saint-Nazaire, Courseulles-sur-Mer, Fécamp.) off the northwestern coast of France of total power 1.4 GW. As a result, Alstom confirmed that it would be constructing wind turbine factories at Cherbourg-en-Cotentin

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