A renewed Northern Power plans to ride the wind
Toolbox
By Mel Huff Times Argus Staff - Published: September 2, 2008
WAITSFIELD – A Vermont energy company that builds turbines for the wind market was delivered from Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings last month when its parent company sold the division to a group of private investors for $12.9 million.
On Aug. 15, Distributed Energy Systems sold the assets of Northern Power Systems, its Vermont-based wind turbine division, to CB Wind, a newly formed private company that focuses exclusively on wind energy. CB Wind has changed its corporate name to Northern Power Systems, Inc. The original Northern Power Systems was founded in Waitsfield more than 30 years ago.
Distributed Energy Systems and Northern Power Systems, its wholly owned subsidiary, had filed for Chapter 11 protection on June 4.
"This brought us out of that and did it relatively quickly," said Maureen McCracken, Northern Power Systems' director of marketing. "The new purchase is good news for all of us because it allows us to succeed in the wind market."
Northern Power System's entire staff, about 91 employees, will keep their jobs.
"They wanted to keep the entire team, including the management, together," McCracken said. "We have a really large demand that we're trying to (meet). We've really just been capital-challenged. Now that we have a good financial partner, we expect to be able to grow our staff."
In times past, Northern Power Systems designed and built a variety of power generation systems, but "in the last 12 to 18 months, we've developed a laser focus on wind. This is where we expect to continue to grow," McCracken said.
"There's an excellent market for wind turbines in general, and there's great demand for our Northwind 100," she noted. The Northwind 100 is a mid-scale, 100 kilowatt turbine appropriate for community ownership – that is, ownership by entities such as villages, schools and universities and commercial farms.
The turbine performs well and is reliable, McCracken said. "We have an excellent technology that fits perfectly into what people need. The market's there. Our product is exactly on target." Rather than using gears, which require constant maintenance, Northern Power's turbines use permanent magnet direct drive trains.
Five Northwind 100s have been installed in remote villages in Alaska in the past six weeks, and at least seven more will be installed in other remote locations in North America before the end of October, according to the company's written statement.
Northern Power is also developing a 2.2 megawatt turbine, which makes more efficient use of wind and needs even less maintenance, the statement noted.
Northern Power Systems, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wind Power Holdings, Inc.
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