Building on 10 years experience in the wind power industry and a focus on renewable energy, a new company, Brevini Wind USA, Inc., has recently been formed.
According to Chris Bayliss, managing director of Brevini Australia , the new wind power company will have a production facility based in Muncie, Indiana and will manufacture the main gearboxes for wind turbines based an improved design concept developed by Brevini Power Transmission.
Brevini’s expertise in harnessing wind power is a result of the production of over 50,000 pitch and yaw systems installed globally using Brevini planetary gearboxes. The planetary drive for wind power offers an efficiency of up to 98% and is able to deliver high reduction ratios in small packages, while able to transmit several times the torque of similarly-sized conventional gear units.
Another feature is the compact size and lightweight nature which requires less installation space.
The gearboxes to be produced by Brevini Wind will be used for wind turbines range from 0.9 to 3.X MW.
The new design wind turbine gearbox has a higher safety factor, with a 15% reduction in weight. As well, the design boasts easier and faster maintenance and extended service life for bearings and gears because of a new design oil and cooling system.
“Over the long term, cost of ownership is up to 75% less than existing technology, which requires gearbox substitution and substantial crane cost for replacement,” explained Bayliss. The new units will only require servicing and parts replacement, without the use of a crane. “The time frame for such work is over a number of days compared to several months required for gearbox replacement,” he added.
The announcement of the new Brevini company and manufacturing plant comes in the heels of the official opening in April of a facility in Yancheng China which will have an annual production capacity of 50,000 planetary gear units.
The later plant will be joined by another facility currently under construction in the same location. This plant will manufacture hydraulic systems and transmissions for Brevini Fluid Power, another company in the Brevini Group.