An American clean energy company is bringing state-of-the-art “ultra-modern” wind turbines that it says will be a game changer in Fiji’s renewable energy landscape.
Infinite Power Corporation, through its Fiji subsidiary Infinite Power Clean Energy (Fiji) Pte Ltd (IPC), signed a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with the Ministry of Fisheries and Forestry last week, sealing a deal to install its turbines in 27 locations around Viti Levu, Vanua Levu and Rotuma.
“Our wind turbines are ultra-modern because they’re not two or three blades propeller-looking turbines like the ones from the past,” said IPC founder and chief executive officer Robert Beam.
“Ours have hundreds of ‘wings’ within a ring, so it’s actually a wing ring that is made of stainless steel and aluminum parts and it only takes one mile an hour of wind to make it produce electricity.”
The Agreement with the Ministry of Fishery and Forestry will allow IPC to invest $US55 million for the manufacturing and installation of 27 “ultra-modern” wind turbines totaling 19.75 Megawatts in the 27 locations.
“These are actual locations that the Ministry of Fisheries already owns and they currently have diesel generators running at these locations,” Mr Beam said.
“We are just going to replace the diesel generators with wind turbines. We’ll power ice plants for the fishermen. It’s very expensive to run a diesel generator 24 hours a day to keep ice plants going. So this will stop the bleeding because most people with diesel generators are bleeding to death financially.”
Mr Beam says their proprietary wind turbine technology is unique in that its generators produce AC and DC power at the same time and has the capacity to “hold a full charge for two to three weeks, even if the wind are to stop blowing for any reason”.
