Moventas Inc.

Winds of change┬áKeeping up with growing demand is an interesting problem to have in a declining economy, Moventas Wind Gear Service vice president Juha Paananen explains to Gary Toushek. The wind turbine industry has been enjoying steadily escalating growth during the last decade in the US and Canada, and it was recently spurred on by the alternative energy strategy of President Obama. Component manufacturers like Moventas, based in Jyv├ñskyl├ñ, Finland, are trying their best to keep up with demand. The company makes and services two product lines: wind turbine gearboxes and gear assemblies for the mining and pulp & paper industries, employing more than 1,400 people at 12 locations in Finland, Sweden, Germany, the US, Canada, China and Singapore. Its former parent company is Metso, a large Finnish pulp & paper and mining machinery industrial corporation founded more than 70 years ago, with 28,000 employees in more than 50 countries. In 2005 Metso streamlined its core businesses and the gear division, Metso Drives, was sold to European private equity firm CapMan Oyj. It soon determined that the effort needed to support the growth rate in wind turbine gearboxes required more funding and sold Moventas to a larger private equity firm, IK (Industri Kapital) Investment Partners, the current owner.Today Moventas has an evolutionary North American presence, with service operations for industrial gears in Cambridge, Ontario, and Greenville, South Carolina, and wind gearbox service operations in Big Spring, Texas, and Portland, Oregon, which is also where Juha Paananen, vice president of wind gear service for North America, has his office. Paananen says the last three-year period has seen an incredible boom in business, both in orders for new product and in servicing requests from a growing number of customers. ÔÇ£Our owner, Industri Kapital, has been good in responding quickly to the market; it has invested heavily. WeÔÇÖve doubled our capacity in Finland, where our gearboxes have been manufactured up to now, and weÔÇÖre planning a North American production/service facility in Faribault, Minnesota, with 3.8-megawatt testing capacity. Also, the Big Spring plant is only a year old, and weÔÇÖre already expanding it; itÔÇÖs located in the middle of thousands of wind turbines in Texas.ÔÇØBoth wind-dedicated locations have the capability of testing wind gearboxesÔÇöPortland up to 2.0 MW and Big Spring at the kilowatt classÔÇöwhich Paananen considers the critical element of the business, in order to verify that a repaired unit meets the same requirements as a new unit. Field testing by service technicians of an existing unit on a wind turbine has its own demands. Troubleshooters are usually called in to solve noise and vibration problems. A faulty gearbox can cause the entire turbine to vibrate, and the noise can carry for several miles.ÔÇ£We think of wind turbines as one of the most demanding applications for our gearboxes, first because these units are usually situated in the middle of nowhere, so accessibility can be difficult and time-consuming. The technician has to climb the turbine for normal testing, or in a more serious situation, a crane is required in order to remove one gearbox and replace it with another, usually either with a new gearbox or a factory-refurbished one, just to minimize downtime. Turbines are also subjected to the extremities of weather and climate, from thunderstorms and tornados to the heat of the desert to the frigidity of the northern winter. So the components of a gearbox must consistently be able to handle huge variances reliably,ÔÇØ Paananen says.There are no standard wind turbine gearboxes. Every turbine manufacturer has several models, and there are several major turbine manufacturersÔÇöin North America, the biggest by far is General Electric; in Europe itÔÇÖs Danish Vestas, followed by Siemens in Germany; Suzlon in India; Gamesa as well as Acciona in Spain, to name a few major players. Specs include turbine size, weight, and estimated power loads. Therefore, Moventas has to custom-design and produce many different models of gearboxes. The only relative similarity is power capacity: the mainstream turbine product in North America is 1.5 to 2.3 MW, though the latest trend is toward 3.0 MW. ÔÇ£The technology is still developing, and unit sizes are growing, which will save in maintenance costs, because if we take, as an example, the kilowatt-class turbine, you need three turbines to match one 2-megawatt turbine. And since all gearboxes need the same frequency of oil changesÔÇöpreventive maintenanceÔÇöthat means three service calls for three turbines, versus one oil change for one larger unit.ÔÇØThe planned lifetime of a wind turbine is 20 years, though some function well up to 30 years. Over the last decade turbine manufacturers have designed a new generation of machine, with the smallest units being over 600 kW. Of the approximately 35,000 existing wind turbines of all sizes in North America, Paananen says ÔÇ£at least 15,000 are a more modern style; roughly 10,000 of those were installed in the last three years, which truly shows the North American boom. Those 15,000 produce about 90 percent of all wind power generated in North America, and of those, over 3,000 are equipped with Moventas gearboxes; the rest of the turbines are mainly small, old and inefficient.ÔÇØ Incidentally, wind turbines currently account for only one percent of the electricity generated on the continent.Does Paananen think thereÔÇÖs a possibility of a gearless wind turbine in the future? ÔÇ£China did a study of turbinesÔÇömainly the 3-plus megawatt type erected just offshoreÔÇöand concluded that the ideal turbine design is somewhere between gears and gearless: a simpler gearbox and a modified generator with permanent magnets. At Moventas, we donÔÇÖt fear gearless turbines taking over the market, because there are challenges in the repair and maintenance of those, as well as reliability. The majority of turbine failures are not related to their gearboxes. Serious storms, especially with lightning, can cause the electronics of turbines to go haywire.ÔÇØ Paananen admits that with the growing increase in orders for new product, thereÔÇÖs a drag on the industry to respond appropriately. ÔÇ£One of the main reasons is that the installed base here has come mainly from Europe, since most manufacturers are located there. Even American turbine manufacturers are using a lot of European components, and now when everyone is so busy, in some cases itÔÇÖs been painfully slow for North American customers to get product or service. So itÔÇÖs mind-boggling trying to keep up with demand.ÔÇØ ÔÇô Editorial research by Sam Howard┬á