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Print Edition StoriesThursday, February 25, 2010
Q&A
Northern Power president Amin talks small-scale wind power
By Jackie Noblett
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Parthiv Amin’s professional expertise is developing turbine drivetrains to be used in some of the largest wind farms in the world, but his latest challenge is to crack open the potential market for turbines on much smaller parcels of land.
Northern Power Systems, the Barre, Vt., wind turbine maker, named Amin president of its community wind business last week, placing him in charge with sales and product development of the company’s Northwind 100-kilowatt turbine. Amin recently spoke with Mass High Tech reporter Jackie Noblett of the challenges to selling turbines to towns, companies and nonprofits.
What interested you in Northern Power’s technology?
I come from a world, the utility side, that saw permanent magnet direct drive systems as a disruptive technology. I see the bright future for Northern Power in terms of having this technology in its turbines. I wouldn’t say it’s a revolutionary technology, but it’s a technology that takes it to the next step.
What is different about selling community-scale wind turbines versus larger, utility-scale turbines?
The dynamics are very different. In the utility market, you’ve got Vestas, Siemens, GE, all of these very large companies and a finite number of customers. Community wind is different because part of the job is educating people on community wind.
It’s not much different than in 2008 on the utility-scale side, when we were bringing in suppliers that didn’t know what the wind industry was about ... From a technical and financial aspect, it works well. What we have to do now is educate people on how does it work, what are the processes and how it helps my community.
The community wind market also has a number of small startups like Northern Power trying to gain a share of the market. How do you stand out among the crowd?
It all comes down to cost per kilowatt-hour.
How does Northern Power’s new outpost in Europe fit into its community-wind sales strategy?
The cost of energy is much higher in Europe and the economics make sense because the land is saturated — it’s difficult to construct large utility-scale wind farms. We’re promoting very aggressively in both southern and northern Europe, and we see a very, very bright future there.
Do you plan to continue building the community wind turbines in the United States?
We’re very proud to be in Barre producing components that create jobs there, and we will continue to build the Northwind 100 turbines in Vermont and the utility scale turbines somewhere in the United States.
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