Nordic Windpower Offered $16 Million DOE Loan Guarantee to Expand Its U.S. Wind Turbine ProductionDate Posted: July 1, 2009 Berkeley, CA--Nordic Windpower USA, Inc. announced July 1 that it has received a conditional commitment for a $16 million dollar loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy (DOE), supported through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Nordic is among the first companies to receive the DOE’s loan guarantee offer. The company, based in Berkeley, CA, will use funds from the US Federal Financing Bank to support the expansion of its assembly plant in Pocatello, Idaho.
Nordic Windpower manufactures and sells innovative two-bladed, utility-scale wind turbines with proprietary, flexible teeter hub technology. The one megawatt N1000 turbine is designed to provide the lowest maintenance and installed cost, and high reliability for community wind and distributed utility projects.
“Nordic’s expansion will create new and skilled green jobs to boost the economy and help meet America’s growing energy needs with clean wind power,”. said Tom Carbone, CEO of Nordic Windpower. “We appreciate DOE’s vote of confidence in our innovative technology and our business model with this action”
“This award clearly demonstrates that President Obama and Secretary Chu are investing decisively in the economy, in job growth, and in clean technology with ‘shovel ready’ wind energy projects such as ours” said Mr. Carbone.
The company will create more than 75 new skilled jobs at its Pocatello facility. Nordic will begin delivering 19 megawatts in recent orders to community wind projects throughout the US and in Uruguay in July 2009.
Nordic turbines are particularly well-suited for community wind power developers to own and operate. Nordic’s technology advance is a proprietary, flexible teeter-hub, which enables a two- rather than three-bladed one-megawatt design, reducing weight and load, and thus, the cost of manufacturing, transportation, installation, and maintenance.
With this technology, the N1000’s rotor blades flex at the hub to dissipate turbulent winds before they can reach or damage the drive train, increasing reliability and ensuring virtually maintenance-free operations. The turbines are more economical to install because the blades are attached to the hub and nacelle on the ground and can be raised with a single crane lift. Heavier, three-bladed turbines generally require two to four crane lifts for the same assembly function.
“The Department of Energy and its Loan Guarantee Division have been very responsive throughout the due diligence process and moved our application along rapidly,” said Prakash Ramachandran, CFO of Nordic Windpower. “We thank them, and acknowledge WorldBusiness Capital, Inc. our excellent lending advisor, for its critical support in helping us to achieve a successful outcome”.
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