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American Superconductor
Announces First Sales of Second Generation (2G) High Temperature Superconductor
Wire
Westborough, MA, Jan. 24: American Superconductor
Corporation (NASDAQ:
AMSC), a leading electricity solutions company, today announced it has booked orders
for the first 2,500 meters of second generation (2G) high temperature
superconductor (HTS) wire (also known as "344 superconductors") from 18
customers in seven countries (U.S., China, Germany, Japan, Korea, New Zealand
and Switzerland). The first 1,000 meters of 344 superconductors were shipped to
customers by December 31, 2005 at an average selling price of $100 per meter.
Customers expect to utilize the 344 superconductors to characterize its
properties and performance and to make the first prototype power devices such as
fault current limiters, cables, motors and electromagnets.
"The demand for 344 superconductors was strong
immediately after we started regular processing of 2G material in September
2005," commented Greg Yurek, AMSC's chief executive. "We expect to ship the
balance of the 2,500 meters of booked orders this quarter. In addition, the
demand we have for over 14,000 meters over the next 12 months is already
exceeding our planned shipments of 10,000 meters during this period. We are
doing everything we can to accelerate the specification, purchase, commissioning
and qualification of additional full-scale manufacturing equipment to meet the
anticipated growing demand going forward."
Yurek also stated that the company is solidly on
track to be able to ship 344 superconductors at a rate of 300,000 meters per
year by December 2007. "We expect to have all of the equipment, procedures and
methodology in place to be producing this wire at a high yield rate by December
2007," he said. "Our ability to meet customer demand for high performance, high
quality HTS wire on the customer's schedule is what created our market
leadership in first generation HTS wire -- and we expect to maintain this market
leadership with second generation wire."
AMSC's 344 superconductors is a drop-in
replacement for customers who are already using the company's industry-leading
first generation HTS wire (over 90 customers in 20 countries), as well as
customers who are utilizing first generation HTS wire made by others. This means
these customers for first generation wire will not need to re-tool their
manufacturing operations once they adopt 344 superconductors. The same machinery
can simply utilize 344 superconductors to make the next HTS cable, motor,
synchronous condenser, etc. without costly re-design or re-tooling.
AMSC started regular processing of
4-centimeter-wide strips of 2G material on schedule in September 2005. The 4-cm
strips are slit near the end of the manufacturing process into industry standard
HTS wire dimensions of about 4 millimeters in width and about 0.1 millimeters in
thickness. After lamination of the slit wire, the final product is known as a
344 superconductor. As a result of the slitting operation, eight wires are
obtained from one manufacturing pass through of the 4-cm strip -- a key to
significant reductions in the cost of manufacturing 344 superconductors. To
learn more about 2G HTS wire and AMSC's 344 superconductor, please see
here.
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