Doosan Korean Localization, Turbine Manufacturing in Vietnam

Doosan is localizing production of 10 MW wind turbines in Korea, aiming to increase the localization rate of components to 70 percent by next year. IPS has acquired the assets of ABB Industrial Services Business Unit. And Dongtam Group invests 200 million in a wind power equipment factory in Vietnam.

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Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I’m here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Tutaro. And this is your Newsflash. Newsflash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com.

Doosan Enerbility has announced plans to localize 10 megawatt class wind turbines as part of a national project. The company is collaborating with four public power companies. and five small and medium sized enterprises. The project aims to increase the localization rate of components to 70 percent by next year with demonstrations planned after 2027.

Phil, a 10 megawatt turbine is a big enterprise to try to complete. Is Doosan ready for that?

Philip Totaro: Yeah, this is a great question because obviously Doosan as an industrial conglomerate in Korea, they’ve got a significant amount of experience with, building, and, and system integration. And for those that aren’t familiar, Doosan also has in the past licensed wind turbine technology.

And designs from different Western companies, including American Superconductor where, they’ve got I forget precisely the number of turbines, but it’s, maybe a couple hundred in, in and around Korea that, that they operate. They’re spending, what they’re saying, is gonna be about 50 billion Korean won on this, which is a substantial chunk of, of money to, to put behind an R& D project to get a, a 10 megawatt turbine built.

And really why they’re doing it is because they want to, if, if people haven’t been paying attention, there was a recent announcement between another Korean company, Unison where they’re going to increase their collaboration and bring, Chinese developed technology into the Korean market.

So, Doosan being I guess, patriotic national company wants to wants to be able to counter that, that move and develop their own, kind of homegrown or at least somewhat home developed technology, even if it, if it comes from a, a licensed design from a Western company, they’re, they’re looking to, build a lot of offshore projects in, in the Korean market.

And, previously they were going to utilize 3 megawatt or 5 megawatt or even 8 megawatt turbines, but the fact they have the ability to, to hopefully go up to 10 should put them in, in good stead with some of the other project development companies that are, are going to be looking to use them as a, as a viable supplier.

Allen Hall: Integrated Power Services has acquired the assets of ABB Industrial Services Business Unit. This acquisition adds five service centers across North America to IPS’s network, expanding their capabilities in electric motor generator and switchgear repair and maintenance. The new locations are in Arizona, Indiana, North Carolina, Alberta and Ontario up in Canada and they’re offering repair and on site services for electric motors up to 50, 000 horsepower and low and medium voltage switchgear from 480 volts to 15 kilovolts.

Well, this is a unique acquisition. Why is ABB divesting of this holding right now?

Philip Totaro: I’ll take a slightly different perspective on it, which is IPS is actually interested in this. And maybe that’s what they did is was to kind of pry this out of ABB’s hands. But for those that aren’t familiar, IPS is an existing vendor of is some, components, electrical system components, control system components for the wind energy sector and has been for a number of years but they’ve recently been building out their services business.

And so for them to be able to take over as you as you described, their their motors, generators, switchgear, circuit breakers it gives IPS a much more robust capability. And so I think that’s where, again, my perspective, Allen, is that this was more of a desire and a pull from IPS rather than necessarily a desire on ABB’s part to let it go, but, they obviously let it go for the right price, and it gives IPS the ability to complement other acquisitions that they’ve recently made in the past three to five years, as well as that.

Things that IPS wants to do with growing the services segment of their, their business.

Allen Hall: Dongtam Group and CS Wind Corporation have announced plans to build a 200 million wind power equipment factory in Vietnam. The facility will be constructed on 124 acres of land leased by Dongtam to CS Wind Vietnam.

It will be one of the largest wind power equipment production factories globally, with the capacity to produce tens of thousands of units per year, supplying equipment ranging from 500 to 4, 000 metric tons per item. This is unique, Phil. You see a lot of action happening in Vietnam at the moment, many European companies exiting The vietnam marketplace but see us when going in quick and putting a lot of money in what is the transition all about?

Philip Totaro: Well this this is kind of fascinating because as we’ve described in, in the uptime wind energy podcast, there are a number of companies, particularly western european project developers that are kind of pulling up cs wind has had a presence previously in vietnam, albeit at a much smaller scale.

But to be getting together with the Vietnamese company and investing 200 million in, in a new factory to, to do, towers and foundations and, and things like that really does give them much more access to the domestic market, which is growing but also international markets where, for those that don’t know, you know, besides China or any domestically made towers in Europe or the U.

S. Vietnam and Indonesia are two of the biggest markets where towers are actually made and, and exported from. So this gives CS Wind in particular again, along with with Dongtam group the opportunity to, to collaborate and ensure that they can, continue the, the addressing the, the demand growth that we see for, for towers.