Or How Company A Charges That Their Nonexistent Wind Turbine Is Better Than Company B’s Nonexistent Wind Turbine
On July 18, 1995 Kenetech Windpower filed a request with the Minnesota
Public Utility Commission for an investigation into Northern States Power’s
award of a 100 MW contract to Kenetech’s competitor, Zond Systems. Kenetech charges that Zond’s proposed Z46 does not exist, that there is no
performance data on such a turbine, and that Zond is not capable of
financing such a project.
The mind boggles at Kenetech’s chutzpah. If ever there was case of the “pot
calling the kettle black” this is it. Kenetech cannot meet the same
standards they are applying to Zond. Moreover, Zond is only guilty of
taking a page from the Kenetech book on how to market a product that
doesn’t exist.
Note: On May 29, 1996 Kenetech announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
For background, Kenetech began marketing their 33 MVS (now dubbed the 33 KVS) in the early 1990s–long before they had a prototype installed.
According to some estimates Kenetech spent upwards of $30 million marketing a turbine they were planning to build. They trumpeted this marvel of modern marketing wizardry around the world as the wind turbine that would break the 5 cent per kilowatt-hour barrier. This was easy to do. No analyst could challenge such an assertion since no such wind turbine had then been built.
Utilities fell over themselves trying to get on the bandwagon. Some, such
as Pacific Gas & Electric, and Niagara Mohawk, and the venerable Electric
Power Research Institute–dollar signs glinting in their eyes–even
invested in the development of this nonexistent turbine for a percentage of
the action. (Few if any of the glowing reports on the proposed 33 MVS by
PG&E and EPRI revealed their financial stake in its success.)
A few iconoclasts, including myself, said “Hold on just a minute, they
haven’t built this thing yet. We don’t know if it will work, and if it
does, how well it will work.”
To their credit, Kenetech wasn’t the first company to sell a wind turbine
that they didn’t have. And since then Kenetech has installed about 400 of
its 33 KVS. But Kenetech’s marketing effort was by far the loudest and most
well financed in the history of wind energy.
To this day there is no public information on the performance of this
so-called breakthrough machine. Kenetech says all such information is
proprietary and therefore they won’t say, and they have bound most of their
partners to keeping this information secret as well. The only project where
such information is available is the 25 MW NSP project in Southwestern
Minnesota.
NSP reports that for the first year of operation the 25 MW project has
produced a capacity factor of 25.4%. Thus, the 33 KVS generates about 890
kWh/m2/yr of rotor swept area. This is a respectable performance, but not
earthshaking, and certainly no better than their old 56-100 is doing in
California despite the use of whiz-bang variable speed technology in the 33
KVS.
As Kenetech picked up contracts one after the other using their proposed
turbine, American competitors saw the handwriting on the wall and began
adopting the same techniques: first FloWind with R. Lynette’s AWT 26 and
subsequently Zond. Both began marketing turbines that were either still on
the drawing board or only in the prototype stage.
Kenetech charges that Zond’s Z46 doesn’t exist. True. But neither does the
turbine, Kenetech’s 45 KVS, which Kenetech proposed to NSP.
In Ottawa, Ontario April 10-12, Kenetech’s spokesman Clarence (Bud) Grebey
denied in a brief interview that Kenetech had plans to build any wind
turbine other than the 33 KVS. In effect he said plans to build a larger
turbine were dead. (Grebey now says that he knew all along of Kenetech’s
plans for a larger turbine. So much for truth, justice, and the American
way.)
The first prototype 45 KVS will not be installed until October, 1995. Thus,
it too does not now exist. It too is a “vapor turbine” as some cynics have
noted.
Grebey asserts that the 45 KVS is “merely” a slightly larger version of
their existing 33 KVS. Huh? The 45 KVS intercepts nearly twice the wind
stream (1.9 times) that of the 33 KVS. Can anyone imagine Boeing
“stretching” a 747 to twice its dimensions. No of course not. The loads are
significantly greater and in effect require a complete re-examination of
the design. The same with a wind turbine. Though the 45 KVS uses the same
design configuration as the 33 KVS (three blades upwind of the tower) they
are essentially different wind turbines.
To top it off Kenetech has yet to prove publicly that the four hundred or
so 33 KVS turbines, let alone the proposed 45 KVS, work reliably to current
industry standards.
Zond has built two prototypes of its Z40. The Z46 will sweep 32% more area
than the Z40. This is a much more modest, though still substantial,
increase in size than the doubling of swept area proposed by Kenetech with
its jump from the 33 KVS to 45 KVS.
Thus, both companies have proposed to use turbines that do not now exist
and both turbines are substantially larger than the turbines they have
built to date. Nevertheless, Kenetech leaps farther than Zond in the vapor
turbine contest.
Kenetech also charges that Zond is incapable of financing such a project.
Ignoring P.T. Barnum’s observation that there’s a sucker born every minute,
Zond has built the world’s largest wind power plant to date, the 77 MW Sky
River project. To do so Zond had to overcome hostile neighbors, a hostile
electric utility, and wildly fluctuating exchange rates. Zond had to also
build or buy into 45 miles of high voltage transmission lines to complete
the project. Sky River is only 23 MW less than its 100 MW NSP bid.
In place of NSP’s 100 MW bid, Kenetech now proposes building an 80 MW
“merchant” wind plant to sell electricity on the spot market. One may well
wonder how Kenetech itself plans to finance such a venture when spot prices
seem headed in only one direction–down.
This industry has always been a source of amazement to me. It certainly
continues to be.
Response 1 of 1
** Written 1:55 PM Aug 4, 1995 by pgipe in cdp:awea.windnet **
A subscriber has called to my attention that the KVS 45 is in fact 46.4
meters in diameter. Therefore the KVS 46, which is what it should now be
called, is 1.98 times the size of the KVS 33. However it will be rated at
500 kW for use in low wind regimes. This gives it a capacity yield of 0.3
kW/m2.
For those who are students of this technology, we should also note that the
56-100 is not 56 feet in diameter as one might think by its designation.
The turbine is actually slightly larger, closer to 58 feet or about 17.5
meters.
