South Korea - Shipbuilder enters wind power business

Ulsan, South Korea-based Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world's largest shipbuilder, is moving into the wind power industry.

Devens, Mass.-based American Superconductor announced last week that it has licensed two of its turbine designs to the South Korean company, which has plans to initially target the growing US wind market and South Pacific as the developing sector.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but American Superconductor said it will receive upfront licence fees for each design, as well as royalty payments for the first several hundred 1.65 megawatt and 2 MW wind turbines produced by Hyundai Heavy Industries.

Under the terms of the agreement, American Superconductor will also provide Hyundai Heavy Industries with the core electronic components for the turbines.

This deal could bring significant exposure for American Superconductor's wind systems in the US, the company's home country and one of largest wind markets in the world.

"That's their first focus," Jason Fredette, spokesman for American Superconductor, told the Cleantech Group.

"Although I'm sure they're going to be selling these wind turbines into many other countries as well. They want to put a big push on here in the US and South Pacific. But Hyundai Heavy Industries has the potential to bring a very large manufacturing scale to the table.

Hyundai Heavy Industries, with $27 billion in sales for 2007 and 25,000 employees worldwide, has yet to announce how many turbines it plans to build, but has said it plans to invest $1billion to expand its renewable energy business, which already includes solar cell production.

The company is building its second solar manufacturing plant, with an expected capacity of 300 MW per year, inEumseong, south of Seoul. Today's deal is the latest in a string of licensing agreements from American Superconductor. "The rest of our customers are in China, India, Turkey, South Pacific, Taiwan, and they're focused primarily on their domestic markets today," said Fredette."That doesn't stop them from, in time, going international."

Hyundai Heavy Industries, which has marketing and sales rights for the two turbines for dozens of countries around the world, plans to start production of the 1.65 MW turbines by the end of 2009.