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Friday, 25 November 2011 00:00 |
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There are no translations available.
Spain’s Inneo Torres is planning to open three concrete-tower factories in Brazil next year, as it gears up to address growing local demand, Recharge has learned.
Currently, it has one factory in Santa Catarina state to provide 56 100-metre towers for Impsa, the Argentine turbine maker and project developer.
Inneo, which designs, manufactures, transports and assembles precast concrete towers and their foundations, will dismantle the Santa Catarina factory and split it in two. Those units and a third factory will be installed next year in Ceará, Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul states, where a number of wind farms are planned.
Next year, the company expects to install 200 towers, growing to 350 in 2013.
Inneo, which has installed 150 concrete towers in Spain and Brazil, has a single factory in central Spain, from which it can supply the entire country. But Brazil is vastly larger, so the company has developed mobile units to make towers for specific projects. Its mobile units can be sized to accommodate a wind farm as small as 15MW.
“In a country as big as Brazil, it is fundamental to be flexible in terms of manufacturing, and not transporting what you make,” says Jorge Jimeno, Inneo Torres’ head of sales. “The risk and uncertainty in logistics is [then] zero.”
Fuente: http://www.rechargenews.com
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El Gobierno lanza su plan de energías renovables para ahorrar 29.000 millones en diez años |
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Friday, 11 November 2011 00:00 |
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There are no translations available.
El proyecto pretende convertir la eólica como la fuerte renovable más importante y superar el objetivo de la UE de llegar a 2020 con un 20% de energía verde.
El Consejo de Ministros ha aprobado un Plan de Energías Renovables (PER) hasta 2020, en el que se contempla la creación de 300.000 empleos en este sector durante la próxima década y un beneficio de 29.000 millones de euros gracias a las menores importaciones de crudo.
En rueda de prensa tras el Consejo de Ministros, el portavoz del Gobierno y ministro de Fomento, José Blanco, explicó que el plan recoge 87 medidas para el impulso de las tecnologías 'verdes' que sitúa la eólica como "la fuente renovable más importante". "El objetivo es que en la segunda mitad de la década se incorporen tecnologías como la geotérmica o las energías del mar", explicó, antes de cifrar en 33.600 millones de euros la aportación del nuevo plan de renovables al PIB.
El nuevo plan se marca como objetivo que en 2020 el 20,8% de la energía proceda de fuentes renovables, frente al 13,2%. Para ello, la eólica instalará en tierra 14.256 megavatios (MW) nuevos, hasta 35.000 MW, mientras que la fotovoltaica pasará de 3.787 MW a 7.250 MW.
Los costes asociados al plan, incluidas las primas, rondan los 24.700 millones, si bien el Gobierno cifra en 29.000 millones los beneficios, sin contar aspectos positivos de difícil cuantificación como la promoción del desarrollo rural, el reequilibrio de la balanza de pagos y las exportaciones tecnológicas.
Planificación energética
Por otro lado, el Gobierno ha aprobado en la reunión de este viernes la planificación energética indicativa hasta 2020, en la que se estima que el consumo final de energía al final de la década será solo ligeramente superior al actual, esto es, de unos 102.220 kilotoneladas de petróleo o equivalente.
El peso de las fuentes fósiles sobre la matriz energética española pasará en 2020 del 77% al 70%, de modo que el porcentaje de autoabastecimiento energético podrá situarse al final del periodo en el 31,5%. La intensidad energética final, que es la cantidad de energía necesaria para producir un aumento de un punto en el PIB, mejorará un 2% durante el periodo.
Fuente: www.expansion.com
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INNEO TORRES presente en el Expo WindPower Zaragoza 2011 |
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Thursday, 29 September 2011 00:00 |
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There are no translations available.
Inneo Torres, juntamente con su partner tecnológico Esteyco Energía, estuvo presente en el Expo WindPower Zaragoza 2011, el evento más importante del sector eólico español. La feria se ha confirmado como referente del sector energético internacional y nos ha brindado más una vez la oportunidad de compartir de esta experiencia. |
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Noticia ReCharge: In Depth: Wind industry is caught in a Brazilian steel-price trap |
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Thursday, 15 September 2011 00:00 |
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There are no translations available.
High domestic steel prices are one of the main barriers to making future wind projects profitable in Brazil.
Developers are facing razor-thin margins after the two power tenders in August saw some projects awarded power-purchase contracts at less than R$100 ($58.30) per MWh.
The price of steel is 50-70% higher in Brazil than on the international market. Belo Horizonte-based Usiminas — a former state-owned company privatised in the 1990s — enjoys a near monopoly on domestic steel plate supply, and the government allows it to set different prices for domestic sales and exports.
At the same time, Brazil’s national development bank, BNDES, will not give developers full access to its funding unless at least 60% of a project’s equipment is produced in Brazil. That percentage is determined by weight, and towers can constitute 80% of a wind farm’s mass.
Nearly all Brazilian developers depend on the bank’s cheap financing to make their projects viable, and BNDES does not consider foreign steel rolled in Brazil as local content, meaning that companies are generally unable to import from abroad.
Last year, BNDES was considering an exception to its rules for imported steel, but the proposal was shelved in August.
Brazil’s steel industry is facing strong competition from imports, putting pressure on margins, so producers fiercely oppose any relaxation of local-content rules.
“Clearly, if you want to play in Brazil, you have to get access to BNDES financing, and that exposes you to these steel prices,” says Brian Gaylord, an analyst with MAKE Consulting in Chicago, who specialises in the Brazilian market.
He says the high cost of steel plate makes towers disproportionately expensive in Brazil. Gaylord says some companies experimented with importing Asian steel for about a third of their requirements, but the strategy needs high volumes to create any real price advantage.
Wind turbine manufacturers, developers and industry representatives are highly critical of government policy, and are increasingly looking to concrete towers as an alternative.
“Obviously they [Brazil] want to build a steel industry and they are doing it by artificially raising prices,” Steve Sawyer, secretary-general of the Global Wind Energy Council, tells Recharge. “It’s good for the steel industry, but bad for everyone else.”
“It’s the prerogative of a sovereign state,” says Alstom’s vice-president for wind, Alfonso Faubel. “Steel is used in development, so if you want development to take place you are always going to have certain conditions of local content.”
But Edgard Corrochano, Mercosur director at Gamesa, which was one of the most aggressive bidders in the recent tenders, says he hopes the situation will change, with Usiminas becoming more competitive. “Either [Usiminas] gets with the programme and they have international prices in Brazil, or we are going to see a tendency to go to concrete towers. And as soon as that happens, it’ll be very difficult for it to come back to steel.”
Other manufacturers point out that steel towers, as well as being expensive, are difficult and costly to transport.
Suzlon Brazil chief executive Arthur Lavieri says: “Almost everybody is talking about concrete, and it’s not only because steel prices in Brazil are completely insane, but also because bringing steel tubes of 100-120 metres 3,000km from the biggest factories is simply not possible.”
However, concrete towers need to be made on site, which can be expensive.
“To take advantage of price advantages you need a big project size,” says Gaylord.
Leading local turbine manufacturer Wobben Windpower is experimenting with using mobile concrete plants to build the towers, while Vestas sales director Marcelo Hutschinski says his company can offer concrete towers for wind farms larger than 100MW.
Officials at some turbine manufacturers admit there are drawbacks to concrete, and say they have few alternatives to buying expensive steel.
http://www.rechargenews.com/energy/wind/article278265.ece
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