Jul 12 2007
American Superconductor Corporation, a leading energy technologies company, today announced a series of orders for its Power Quality Static VAR Compensator, or PQ-SVC(TM), offering. The PQ-SVC solution was added to AMSC's product suite through the recent acquisition of Pennsylvania-based Power Quality Systems, Inc. This product eliminates voltage sags and flicker, giving electric distribution companies and manufacturing operations a cost-effective way to safely connect large electrical loads to the local power grid.
Since closing the PQS acquisition on April 27, 2007, AMSC has received orders totaling approximately $1.5 million from four new customers in diverse markets:
- A steel company based in Pennsylvania that is using the PQ-SVC solution in a rolling mill application;
- A Canadian oil and gas company that is using PQ-SVC solutions for two of its natural gas pipelines in Texas;
- A Wisconsin-based consumer goods company that is using the PQ-SVC solution to provide volt-amp-reactive (VAR) support at a substation feeding a university campus in New Orleans; and
- A diversified mining company based in Switzerland that is using the PQ-SVC at a copper mine in Ontario, Canada.
"We are pleased with the rapid customer acceptance of our PQ-SVC solution, which combines PQS's proprietary thyristor switch technology with AMSC's proprietary controls technology to create a powerful new industrial power quality product," said Chuck Stankiewicz, executive vice president and general manager of AMSC Power Systems. "We are seeing strong interest across a broad spectrum of industries for this offering. In addition, our PQS acquisition is enabling us to offer utilities large-scale SVCs that have lower operating costs and at competitive prices compared with other offerings on the market."
AMSC's PQ-SVC solution is highly portable and modular, and can be modified in the field, reducing costs normally associated with upgrades. These products routinely solve problems caused by starting large motors, metal shredders and crushers; and operating sawmills, pump-or-pipeline stations, shipyards, coalmines, feed plants or kindred processes. In addition, the PQ-SVC offering can also cure arc furnace flicker and stabilize transmission lines.