UK small wind turbine manufacturer Ampair has continued its push into the renewable hybrid power system market by launching the containerPod™ range of power solutions predominantly designed for providing platform power for the offshore wind measurement sector.
Jeremy Davies Ampair’s sales and marketing manager says that, “Onshore heated met-masts and LIDAR installations use between 50 and 200 watts of power and to date we have been able to power these with our existing solutions. However in any offshore installation, the loads are typically 400 Watts at a minimum, reaching up to well over 1kW for periods. The main reason for these higher loads is the requirement for essential navigation lighting and communications equipment to be powered coupled with the simultaneous use of traditional met-mast and LIDAR measurement systems on the same platform.”
Ampair’s OF4000 ‘containerPod™’ unit is a turn-key packaged power solution that includes wind generators, PV arrays and an integrated back-up diesel generator which is designed to ‘rescue’ the system should there be a prolonged bout of poor renewable generation weather. The OF4000 system is designed to power continuous loads of up to 850W for 12 months without the need for a support vessel needing to be chartered to refuel the unit.
“After extensive modelling with our in-house stochastic modelling software proAmpair™ we could see that that using a purely renewable solution just didn’t add up as they required much larger battery banks, larger wind turbine arrays and larger solar arrays. These carried a price, weight and deck space premium that was not attractive. From the model, we could see that the best efficiency was obtained by using a small DC diesel generator that should only need to be run for 50-100 hours a year. By keeping the generator run time so low, we still deliver the low/no maintenance benefit of a purely renewables-based system, but we can supply power year round in a much more cost and size effective package”.
Ampair’s containerPod solution includes a variety of proprietary innovations designed to minimise the platform size needed by its customers. These include a unique ‘through-deck’ turbine pole which allows the Ampair 600 wind turbine to be lowered vertically to chest height, and also a tightly integrated generator and fuel tank compartment which share a common bund.
David Sharman, Managing Director at Ampair commented: “Ultimately Ampair’s system can be configured to power all of the required loads on a met platform in one single containerised package with the added benefit of providing additional internal real estate for all of the customers electrical panels. The containerPod is the natural progression from our successful land based heliPod and trailerPod hybrid systems, and leverages our deep understanding of the offshore industry. As a result interest to date has been significant and we have increased the size of our manufacturing plant and workforce to cope with demand which is a great step forward for us.”
[mappress]
Source: ampair, October 21, 2011