This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(July 2013) |
Company type | Public |
---|---|
TMX: NPS | |
Industry | Wind Power |
Founded | 1974 |
Headquarters | , United States |
Key people | CEO Troy Patton, CTO Jonathan Lynch |
Products | Wind turbines |
Northern Power Systems was a company that designed, manufactured, and sold wind turbines. They also provided engineering development services and technology licenses for energy applications globally. The company was founded in 1974, [1] and grew into a multinational corporation headquartered in Barre, Vermont, with European headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland and a significant presence in the United Kingdom and Italy. Northern Power Systems reported robust revenue growth for the third quarter of 2014 and achieved EBITDA profitability. The company closed in 2019 when its last business unit was sold to WEG Industries. [2]
Northern Power Systems is credited as having been the original company that led to the formation several companies including Northern Reliability, Inc. (NRI) and its entrance into energy storage. [3] [4] Northern Reliability was subsequently merged into American battery manufacturer KORE Power, Inc. to become its integrated services division, KORE Solutions, Inc. [5]
Northern Power Systems manufactured the NPS 60 and NPS 100 wind turbines for community applications; The NPS 100 is rated as having a 100 kilowatt capacity, and the NPS 60 is rated as having a 60 kilowatt capacity. Northern Power Systems also manufactured the larger 2.3 megawatt turbine designed for industrial applications such as wind farms: named the Northern Power 2X platform.
Energy storage is the capture of energy produced at one time for use at a later time to reduce imbalances between energy demand and energy production. A device that stores energy is generally called an accumulator or battery. Energy comes in multiple forms including radiation, chemical, gravitational potential, electrical potential, electricity, elevated temperature, latent heat and kinetic. Energy storage involves converting energy from forms that are difficult to store to more conveniently or economically storable forms.
A kilowatt-hour is a non-SI unit of energy equal to 3.6 megajoules (MJ) in SI units which is the energy delivered by one kilowatt of power for one hour. Kilowatt-hours are a common billing unit for electrical energy supplied by electric utilities. Metric prefixes are used for multiples and submultiples of the basic unit, the watt-hour.
Distributed generation, also distributed energy, on-site generation (OSG), or district/decentralized energy, is electrical generation and storage performed by a variety of small, grid-connected or distribution system-connected devices referred to as distributed energy resources (DER).
Wind power is the use of wind energy to generate useful work. Historically, wind power was used by sails, windmills and windpumps, but today it is mostly used to generate electricity. This article deals only with wind power for electricity generation. Today, wind power is generated almost completely with wind turbines, generally grouped into wind farms and connected to the electrical grid.
Net metering is an electricity billing mechanism that allows consumers who generate some or all of their own electricity to use that electricity anytime, instead of when it is generated. This is particularly important with renewable energy sources like wind and solar, which are non-dispatchable. Monthly net metering allows consumers to use solar power generated during the day at night, or wind from a windy day later in the month. Annual net metering rolls over a net kilowatt-hour (kWh) credit to the following month, allowing solar power that was generated in July to be used in December, or wind power from March in August.
Southern California Edison (SCE), the largest subsidiary of Edison International, is the primary electric utility company for much of Southern California. It provides 15 million people with electricity across a service territory of approximately 50,000 square miles.
Grid energy storage is a collection of methods used for energy storage on a large scale within an electrical power grid. Electrical energy is stored during times when electricity is plentiful and inexpensive or when demand is low, and later returned to the grid when demand is high, and electricity prices tend to be higher.
Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines that was founded in 1945. The company operates manufacturing plants in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, India, Italy, Romania, the United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Australia, China, Brazil, Poland and the United States, and employs 29,000 people globally.
WEG is a Brazilian company, operating worldwide in the electric engineering, power and automation technology areas. Headquartered in Jaraguá do Sul, Brazil, the company produces electric motors, generators, transformers, turbines, drives, and coatings. WEG has operations in around 100 countries, with approximately 39,000 employees (2023). It's one the largest manufacturers of eletric motors in the world
Small wind turbines, also known as micro wind turbines or urban wind turbines, are wind turbines that generate electricity for small-scale use. These turbines are typically smaller than those found in wind farms. Small wind turbines often have passive yaw systems as opposed to active ones. They use a direct drive generator and use a tail fin to point into the wind, whereas larger turbines have geared powertrains that are actively pointed into the wind.
Hybrid power are combinations between different technologies to produce power.
Wind power has been used as long as humans have put sails into the wind. King Hammurabi's Codex already mentioned windmills for generating mechanical energy. Wind-powered machines used to grind grain and pump water — the windmill and wind pump — were developed in what is now Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan by the 9th century. Wind power was widely available and not confined to the banks of fast-flowing streams, or later, requiring sources of fuel. Wind-powered pumps drained the polders of the Netherlands, and in arid regions such as the American midwest or the Australian outback, wind pumps provided water for livestock and steam engines.
A load-following power plant, regarded as producing mid-merit or mid-priced electricity, is a power plant that adjusts its power output as demand for electricity fluctuates throughout the day. Load-following plants are typically in between base load and peaking power plants in efficiency, speed of start-up and shut-down, construction cost, cost of electricity and capacity factor.
A123 Systems, LLC, a subsidiary of the Chinese Wanxiang Group Holdings, is a developer and manufacturer of lithium iron phosphate batteries and energy storage systems.
UltraBattery is a trademark of the lead-acid battery technology commercialized by Furukawa Battery Co. Ltd. UltraBattery has thin carbon layers on spongy lead active material for negative plates. The original idea that combines ultracapacitor technology with lead–acid battery technology in a single cell with a common electrolyte came from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. As of 2020, hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, were generating over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each year. Wind turbines are an increasingly important source of intermittent renewable energy, and are used in many countries to lower energy costs and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. One study claimed that, as of 2009, wind had the "lowest relative greenhouse gas emissions, the least water consumption demands and the most favorable social impacts" compared to photovoltaic, hydro, geothermal, coal and gas energy sources.
Coda Automotive Inc. was a privately held American company headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The company designed and assembled lithium-iron phosphate (LiFePO4) battery systems for automotive and power storage utility applications, and electric cars. Miles Automotive partnered with Hafei and Qingyuan Electric Vehicle to establish Coda Automotive as an affiliate company. The name CODA comes from the musical term for the concluding passage of a piece of music. Coda Automotive has said that it chose the name because its electric vehicle technology represents an end for combustion engine vehicles, and the start of the electric vehicle era.
In 2021, Wind power in Vermont consisted of five utility-scale wind farms with a total capacity of 149 megawatts (MW). They were responsible for one-sixth of in-state electricity generation in 2019.
The electric vehicle industry in China is the largest in the world, accounting for around 57.4% of global production of electric vehicles (EVs) and around 500,000 exports in 2021. In 2021, CAAM reported China had sold 3.34 million passenger electric vehicles, consisting 2.73 million BEVs and 0.6 million PHEV, which is around 53% share of the global market of 6.23 million "new energy" passenger vehicles – BEVs, PHEVs, and HEVs. China also dominates the plug-in electric bus and light commercial vehicle market, reaching over 500,000 buses and 247,500 electric commercial vehicles in 2019, and recording new sales of 186,000 commercial EVs in 2021.
Variable renewable energy (VRE) or intermittent renewable energy sources (IRES) are renewable energy sources that are not dispatchable due to their fluctuating nature, such as wind power and solar power, as opposed to controllable renewable energy sources, such as dammed hydroelectricity or biomass, or relatively constant sources, such as geothermal power.