New L-350 Lights Reduce Long-Term Investment
24 April 2007
The global wind energy market has seen phenomenal growth in recent years, with investments in new equipment in 2005 reaching a staggering $23 billion. The growth continued in 2006 when the US was the world's biggest investor in wind energy, with new investment topping $4 billion, making wind energy one of the nation's biggest sources of new power generation, second only to natural gas.
Orga had anticipated this growth and was already working on the next generation of one of it core product solutions, the L350 aviation obstruction light for wind turbines. In 2005, Orga introduced a new state-of-the-art obstruction lighting system aimed at meeting the growing demand in the US and elsewhere for simple, reliable and long-term red medium-intensity obstruction lighting solutions.
As Orga sales manager, Matthieu Scheffers, explains, "One of the biggest advantages of the L350 product is that it's a single unit system.The automatic day-night controller, the flash character controller and the status monitoring unit are all built into the light itself. This makes it quick and easy to install. You have one standard 110VAC - 230VAC power cable for the light and you don't have to install separate flash controllers, photocells or monitoring systems. This can save clients a lot of time and installation material costs. This is exactly what our customers are looking for. They want the installation and operation of obstruction lights to be as simple as possible without any loss in quality and reliability.!
But that's not all. He adds, "The number and size of wind parks is growing. As a result, the regulations have changed and now require that the lights installed on wind turbines in large-area wind parks be synchronized with each other. This meant we had to continue to develop the obstruction light solution. Imagine if you need install lights on as many as 100 wind turbines at one wind park. You have to look for the simplest and most reliable means to deploy them."
That was the idea behind Orga's new obstruction light system, Scheffers says. The result is a new all-in-one solution, the L350-864-G obstruction light. While the apparently obvious solution might be to add an external synchronizer to the system, Orga has followed the optimum all-in-one concept and built the synchronization facility into the L350-864-G light itself. "You can only adopt such technology pathways if you have a vertically integrated product portfolio, involving not only the obstruction light but also the complete system operation concept." Scheffers says. "This is a core reason for Orga's success in such a competitive marketplace. Making installation, maintenance and monitoring as easy as possible means customers can focus on their core business: the generation of power from wind."
Of course, Orga's obstruction lights meet the standards set by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). In fact, Orga is so confident of the quality of its lights that it gives clients a five-year warranty on them, compared with the one or two-year warranties given on most other lights.
"This means clients save in the short-term - on installation costs - and in the long-term, as the real cost of ownership is in fact lower in the long term. After all, Orga wants to forge long-term relationships with its clients, so we have to know what their priorities are. We truly believe the L-350 product range meets all current demands and more. However, that doesn't mean this is where we stop - we are constantly pushing the technology to meet future market requirements. As the market evolves even further, so will Orga's obstruction lights," Scheffers says.
