Building gearless turbines that are made to last
The leading producer of gearless wind turbines has emerged from the well-known LEITNER group, situated in South Tyrol, Italy. LEITWIND was one of the first companies to develop gearless wind turbines and belongs to the innovation leaders in this segment. Production is situated in Austria and India in order to be close to the company’s core markets Italy and India.
Anton Seeber, LEITWIND CEO, states: “In producing renewable energy, we want to contribute to the lifetime quality of the people in this world.” With around 700 employees LEITWIND can continue on its recent success and with its three company sites in Italy, Austria and India, a turnover of € 163 million was reached. 100 installed wind turbines contributed to a 19% turnover increase with respect to the previous year. The worldwide sales expectations are more than encouraging: with a plus of 22.5 %, the executive board anticipates a € 200 million turnover for 2012.
280 installed units by end of 2012
LEITWIND direct drive technology dramatically simplifies wind turbine assembly. So much, in fact, that LEITWIND turbines can be erected on terrain which would not be feasible for companies producing conventional wind turbines. Literally going where others cannot go, LEITWIND has, in five years, successfully installed close to 280 units worldwide.
In the core market of Italy there are 100 installations; in India 120; in Croatia seven and Bulgaria 17. The rest of the LEITWIND installations are distributed between different markets from France to Canada. In Styria, Austria, another two LEITWIND wind turbines are situated in the ski resort of Salzstiegl. Due to the good collaboration during the first project, the owner decided to once again choose LEITWIND for a further wind turbine – a LTW80 with 1.5 MW rated power, which was installed in October 2011.
On the banks of the Hudson River, seven kilometres south of New York, the municipality of Bayonne had an LTW77 wind turbine installed with a rated power of 1.5 MW in 2011. The turbine now produces clean energy for Bayonne’s combined sanitary-storm water pumping station on Oak Street.
The challenge of the project was to find the right solution for a very specific site. The salty air in the vicinity of the coast required the use of a special cooling system with a closed cooling loop, a technology that had already been successfully employed for a number of LEITWIND wind turbines in
Sri Lanka.
Tailor-made partnership
Perfect products and solutions cannot be bought off the shelf. Tailoring an installation to the requirements of climate, terrain and energy demand takes dedicated, experienced specialists. Accordingly, LEITWIND offers customers not only leading edge technology, but also a productive project partnership which fulfils all individual customer needs. The company’s goal is an efficient, reliable and profitable solution for customers – from the first stages of planning over the whole lifecycle of an installation.
