Brazillian growth targets S American wind energy

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Mar 29, 2006

Owens Corning has added a new glass fibre knitting line at its facility north of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Owens Corning has added a new glass fibre knitting line at its facility north of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

This news follows two other major Owens Corning announcements for the wind energy market which include a capital investment in India to support the country's growing wind energy demand and a new breakthrough single-end roving and knitted fabric, WindStrand, the first application using the new Owens Corning high-performance reinforcement platform, HiPer-tex.

WindStrand product will allow the wind energy market to take another step forward in competing successfully against other alternative energy sources by reducing the cost per kilowatt-hour.

"This latest expansion to our fabric knitting capacity highlights our strategy to support market growth and emphasises our multi-million-dollar commitment over the next few years to provide Latin American customers innovative solutions and choices to help them compete, grow and succeed both locally and globally", said Carlos Valdez, VP and Managing Director for Owens Corning Latin America.

In addition to the glass fibre operations, this new line complements the existing moulding mat line, principally providing technical fabrics for the automotive market, and will offer products for transportation and marine applications as well as wind energy.

"Highly technical fabrics are used in several key industries but primarily in the wind energy market to meet rising demand for renewable, alternate energy sources such as wind power, which will benefit Latin America in terms of economic development and energy conservation as our focus in Latin America is aligned with infrastructure improvement", concluded Valdez.

Wind energy power generation is quickly developing on a global scale.

In Latin America, Brazil at present has the largest installed capacity of wind energy power generation and offers the greatest potential along with Argentina where wind-based energy has been attracting significant attention as an economically viable source of electric power generation in the country's Southern Patagonian provinces where there are consistently strong westerly winds.

And further north, the Mexico Renewable Energy Programme (MREP) promotes the development of alternate energy sources.

Mexico's only key wind farm is situated at La Ventosa, Oaxaca, yet Mexico has good locations and wind resources offering the potential to produce significant renewable energy substituting more than half of the fossil fuel used at present.

HiPer-tex platform, which is targeted to be commercially available in late 2006, is the result of a revolution in proprietary glass melting, fibrising and sizing technology and will be produced using the Owens Corning next-generation fibre glass manufacturing process, which has a significantly smaller environmental footprint than other technologies currently in use.

WindStrand product, the first application of the HiPer-Tex platform, will allow turbine manufacturers to increase blade lengths by as much as 6% and deliver up to 12% more power - for up to 20% less cost than any competing carbon-glass hybrid solution currently on the market.