Month: July 2017

  • Wind turbines manufacturers business model

    Today I’ve been asked by a reader about the business model of wind turbines manufacturers (also called OEM, Original Equipment Manufacturer). As I think it’s interesting question, I decided to write a post about it. In a nutshell, wind turbine manufacturers are selling a product. This product is assembled pretty much like a car –…

  • Going Glocal: how to create local content

    It is not unusual for public tenders in the renewable energy industry to request for a certain percentage on “local content requirements” (LCR). This  requirements exist (and are usually very demanding) in the majority of countries in South America (Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina) and in several other emerging countries (Morocco, Russia, etc.). The required percentage can…

  • Type of towers – stiff, soft or soft soft?

    In the last month I spent a lot of time discussing about “soft soft” towers. But what does it exactly means? Steel tower for wind turbine are classified as stiff, soft, or soft soft based on the relative natural  frequencies of tower, rotor and blades. You obviously want to avoid that your tower is excited…

  • Sell a service, not a product: the Indian way to wind energy

    India is becoming a very big market for wind energy. After the decline of many European markets (Spain in primis) India is now fighting with Germany to be the third bigger nation in terms of yearly installed megawatts (somewhere around 3600 MW). You can see the other in the graphic above, that I’ve stolen from…

  • Top 5 owners of wind turbines

    Ever asked yourself who is buying wind turbines? There are quite a lot of customers profiles – from tiny companies (or even a couple of farmers joining their strengths and lands in a renewable energy project) to professional developers, factories interested in using the energy produced all the way up in the ladder to the…