Jun 2 2008
GE Energy, the leading U.S. supplier of wind turbines, announced today at WindPower 2008 that its installed fleet of 1.5-megawatt wind turbines has surpassed 115 million operating hours in commercial service worldwide.
“This is an industry record for a single model of wind turbine,” said Victor Abate, Vice President-Renewables for GE Energy. “This milestone has been achieved by more than 8,500 GE 1.5-megawatt wind turbines around the world, including more than 5,200 in the United States. This performance milestone firmly establishes our 1.5-megawatt wind turbine as the workhorse of the global wind energy industry.”
“Increasing reliability is a hallmark of GE’s 1.5-megawatt fleet,” noted Abate. “Since 2002, GE has invested over $750 million in driving reliable and efficient wind technology to improve performance and increase customer value.”
GE’s worldwide service and parts infrastructure is key to the reliable performance of the 1.5-megawatt fleet. GE’s customer support and remote monitoring centers in Schenectady, N.Y. and Salzbergen, Germany provide continuous monitoring and diagnostics services 24 hours a day. The mission of these centers is to increase equipment availability, reduce downtime and operational costs.
Availability of wind turbine parts also is critical to reliable wind power plant operations. To further expand its parts capabilities for customers in the wind industry, today GE is opening a parts fulfillment center in Schenectady, NY that will feature 24-hour-a day access and new online ordering tools. Later this month, GE will also open a parts operation center near Memphis, TN, stocked with fleet-wide critical parts for overnight delivery, when needed.
To support regions with growing wind fleets, GE has also opened Wind Energy Service Centers such as the center in Sweetwater, Texas, where teams of wind technicians work to optimize the performance of wind turbine power plants in the area. According to the American Wind Energy Association, Texas currently leads the U.S. in wind energy, with 5,316.65 megawatts of installed wind capacity by the end of March 2008, of which GE’s 1.5-MW wind turbines account for over one-third.
GE’s Abate also sees an urgent need for an immediate extension of current renewable policies, such as the production tax credit (PTC) that will expire in December of this year. "Every day that passes without an extension puts at risk American jobs and clean energy investments that are reducing the country's dependence on foreign energy imports,” he said.
A Global Footprint
GE has been one of the world’s leading suppliers of power generation technology and services for more than a century, and the 1.5-megawatt wind turbine builds on that global heritage. The company has six wind manufacturing and assembly facilities in Germany, Spain, China and the United States.
“All of these facilities are registered to ISO 9001:2000 and our Quality Management System, which incorporates rigorous Six Sigma quality methods,” said Abate. “We believe wind power is becoming a mainstream power source and we are committed to helping our customers design and implement reliable energy solutions to meet their unique requirements.”
GE’s wind turbine technology is a key element of ecomagination, the GE corporate-wide initiative to address challenges such as the need for cleaner, more efficient sources of energy, reduced emissions and abundant sources of clean water.