U.K. wind turbine blade maintenance specialists, GEV Wind Power, based in the North of England, is set for another year of continued growth and is now in a position to support its expanding order books for both North America and EMEA. This follows the successful fundraise of 1.2 million pounds from large grant applications from both the U.K. and Europe plus further input from their investment partners.
The total grant fundraising for more than 500,000 pounds will see the development for offshore application of the innovative and patented GEV Ventura Habitat — a field deployable temporary environment to facilitate blade maintenance in inclement conditions.
“Demand for the Habitat solution is increasing through interest from industry leading manufacturers, together with deployment on our own USA based projects,” said Alastair Gadney, director of Research and Development Projects at GEV Group. “We are delighted that the innovation is now helping to drive down the cost of blade maintenance. More than 65 percent of our projects are currently deployed offshore and developing the Habitat for this environment will be a natural progression.”
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“Innovate U.K. and Horizon 2020 grants help to match our existing significant R&D budget and are crucial to support SME’s like ourselves in helping to drive down the cost of energy,” he said.
The need for infrastructure expansion in the U.S. is brought about by a significant increase in demand for utility scale turnkey blade maintenance solutions. GEV is one of the few ISPs capable of supporting such technically demanding scopes of work and who is prepared to make the necessary investment to support the activity.
“The geographic split of all our projects in the U.S. requires that we invest in our infrastructure appropriately to ensure that our client projects are executed well,” said David Fletcher, managing director of GEV Group. “To scale up and meet the growth potential of our U.S. business requires a significant financial commitment, and it has been encouraging that we have been able to access our existing investor group to support this further expansion in a key geographical market for our wind division.”
GEV has completed more than 28 individual projects in North America over the past six months, deploying up to 60 blade-repair specialists at the peak. The projects extend over eight states and have been managed from the Group’s office in Austin, Texas.
Source: GEV Wind Power
For more information, go to www.gevgroup.com or www.gevwindpower.com
