American Superconductor Corporation (AMSC) is a system provider of megawatt-scale power resiliency solutions that orchestrate the rhythm and harmony of power on the grid, and protect and expand the capability of the Navy’s fleet.
The company’s system level products leverage its proprietary ‘smart materials’ and ‘smart software and controls’ to provide enhanced resiliency and improved performance of megawatt-scale power flow.
Right now, the company is powering the evolution of a grid that is fi...
American Superconductor Corporation (AMSC) is a system provider of megawatt-scale power resiliency solutions that orchestrate the rhythm and harmony of power on the grid, and protect and expand the capability of the Navy’s fleet.
The company’s system level products leverage its proprietary ‘smart materials’ and ‘smart software and controls’ to provide enhanced resiliency and improved performance of megawatt-scale power flow.
Right now, the company is powering the evolution of a grid that is fit for the future: a more reliable and resilient grid built to support and incorporate a broad mix of energy sources. The company’s pioneering products, software and control solutions are creating more efficient ways to deliver power across a mix of energy sources to ensure a reliable grid that meets the rising demand of power and supports critical infrastructure. This exciting energy future also depends on computer chips, batteries and fuel cells that are built from silicon, lithium and carbon. All of these building blocks must be mined, processed and assembled. Industrial manufacturers of these essential materials, as well as semiconductor manufacturers must be able to power their factories in ways that scale without adding complexity or size. The company’s voltage compensators, capacitors, transformers and rectifiers can power the energy-intensive factories of the future while reducing the risk of costly power interruptions that could hinder this journey to a better future.
The company is helping to move the U.S. Navy and Royal Canadian Navy ships into the future by installing protection systems that help them stay hidden from its enemies. The company helps protect and expand the capability of the Navies' surface fleet with advanced superconductor-based systems that provide superior performance advantages to the traditional methods of mine field protection. The company sees the nascent business serving the Navies as an extension of what the company does with its Grid business – this ship is a microcosm of the grid. The company’s products help manage power with a purpose.
In the wind power market, the company enables manufacturers to field highly competitive wind turbines through its advanced power electronics and control system products, engineering, and support services. The company’s power grid and wind products and services provide exceptional reliability, security, efficiency, and affordability to its customers.
The company’s power system solutions help to improve energy efficiency, alleviate power capacity and other constraints, improve system resiliency, and increase the adoption of renewable energy generation. Demand for the company’s solutions is driven by the growing needs for modernized grids that improve power reliability, security, and quality, the U.S. Navy’s effort to upgrade in-board power systems to support fleet electrification, and the need for increased renewable sources of electricity, such as wind and solar energy. Concerns about these factors have led to increased spending by corporations and the military, as well as supportive government regulations and initiatives on local, state and national levels, including renewable portfolio standards, tax incentives, and international treaties.
Market Opportunities
The company provides solutions that address four key drivers of its business: the global demand for renewable and traditional energy; the global demand for critical materials for the electrification of transportation and industrial modernization; the global demand for semiconductors, driven by the electrification of everything; and the electrification of Naval fleets to enhance capability.
The Global Demand for Renewables:
The company designs wind turbines and provide electrical control systems for inside the turbine that control the wind turbine’s voltage, current, frequency, pitch and yaw. At the substation level, the company provides interconnection solutions that allow wind farms to meet utility’s grid code requirements for voltage, power factor and dynamic performance of the plant during unforeseen system disturbances, by utilizing the company’s dynamic voltage management solutions, as well as the company’s static voltage management solutions and harmonic filters. The company provides field service and spare parts to its global installed base of over 18 Gigawatts (‘GW’).
The Global Demand for Critical Materials for the Electrification of Transportation and Industrial Modernization:
The company provides transformation, rectification, voltage management and harmonic filtering systems at the substation level that manage input power from the grid and control power for the operation of large-scale industrial equipment, such as furnaces, chemical plants, or semiconductor fabrication plants. The company’s capabilities to control and convert power help ensure continuous flow of stable high-quality power for the company’s customers.
The Global Demand for Semiconductors:
The company provides sag mitigation systems, which are a substation level power conditioning system. These systems protect and isolate the factory’s critical processes from power system events that could otherwise trip these sensitive processes causing severe disruptions and loss of a customer’s manufactured products. These systems monitor the semiconductor fabrication plant’s incoming electric supply very closely and react in sub-cycle time frames to mitigate voltage sags and swells to provide a conditioned power to the processes. These sag mitigation systems can include both the company’s dynamic and static voltage management, as well as the company’s harmonic filter solutions which are specifically designed to improve the facility's overall power factor and harmonic compliance needs.
The Electrification of the Navy Fleet:
The company provides advanced ship protection systems, that are designed to help fleets increase system efficiencies, enhance warfare capabilities, and boost reliability, performance, and security. The company is developing additional solutions for this important market which may include power management and power generation similar to what the company does for electric grids.
The company’s power system products address the renewable power generation and electrical grid and power infrastructure markets:
Transmission Grid. The company provides complete systems that enable electric utilities and renewable energy project developers to connect and transmit power with exceptional efficiency, reliability, security and affordability. The company provides planning services that allow the company to identify power grid congestion, poor power quality, and other risks, which help the company determine how its solutions can improve network performance. These services often lead to sales of the company’s grid interconnection solutions and power quality systems for wind farms and solar power plants.
Distribution Grid. The company provides a direct-connect power quality system that is installed on the primary distribution network in communities, business parks, or wherever enhanced power quality is beneficial and is designed to increase the reliability and resiliency of the distribution grid to serve the needs of modern energy consumers. The company’s systems save utilities time and money by avoiding costly options to strengthen the distribution grid. The company’s offerings also serve industrial customers looking to power the energy-intensive factories of the future without the risk of costly power interruptions. These industrial customers utilize the company’s voltage compensators, capacitors, harmonic filters, transformers and rectifiers.
Urban Grid Infrastructure. The company designs systems to increase the reliability, security and capacity of the urban grid infrastructure. Today, many urban substations are not networked and can only power a small section of a city. The company’s power dense technology based on proprietary smart materials allows for the inter-connection of substations, controlling the high fault currents that naturally result from such interconnections. If one substation is compromised, other substations help increase capacity and reliability. The company’s system allows instantaneous power outage recovery, potentially doubling to quadrupling a city’s reliability and resiliency while minimizing grid investment. The company designs systems that leverage existing grid assets while protecting cities against storms, outages, and cyber- and physical attacks.
Marine Protection Systems. The company sells advanced degaussing systems to the U.S. Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy. Degaussing systems reduce a naval ship's magnetic signature, making it much more difficult for a mine to detect and damage a ship. The company’s degaussing system is consisted of much smaller, lighter and higher performing HTS cable coils eliminating an estimated 50-80% of the system weight and reducing overall energy consumption versus copper-based degaussing systems.
Solar Power. The company’s solutions enable the grid to handle more distributed generation in the form of rooftop solar. The company’s products are designed to allow the existing grid to handle more renewable capacity.
Wind Power. The company’s solutions enable manufacturers to field wind turbines with exceptional power output, reliability, and affordability. The company supplies advanced power electronics and control systems, license the company’s highly engineered wind turbine designs, and provide extensive customer support services to wind turbine manufacturers. The company’s design portfolio includes a broad range of drive trains and power ratings of 2 megawatts (‘MW’) and higher. The company provides a broad range of power electronics and software-based control systems that are highly integrated and designed for optimized performance, efficiency, and grid compatibility.
Strategy
The company's business strategies are to provide solutions from power generation to delivery; focus on megawatt-scale power offerings; product innovation; provide resiliency and protection capabilities; and pursue emerging overseas markets and serve key markets locally.
Solutions for the Power Quality and Grid Infrastructure Market
The company addresses these challenges in the grid market by providing services and solutions designed to increase the power grid’s capacity, resiliency, reliability, security, and efficiency. The company's solutions orchestrate the rhythm of power on the grid. The company's solutions include:
D-VAR Systems: The company’s D-VAR system consists of power electronics and other static components used for controlling power flow and voltage in the AC transmission system. The company’s D-VAR system aims to increase controllability and power transferability of a network, which allows more effective utilization of existing assets, and reduces the need for new transmission lines and facilities to increase electricity availability. The power that flows through AC networks comprises both real power, measured in watts, and reactive power, measured in Volt Amp Reactive (VARs). In simple terms, reactive power is required to support voltage in the power network. D-VAR systems can provide the reactive power needed to stabilize voltage on the grid. These systems also can be used to connect wind farms and solar power plants to the power grid seamlessly, as well as to protect certain industrial facilities against voltage swells and sags. The company’s D-VAR sales process begins with its group of experienced transmission planners working with power grid operators, renewable energy developers, and industrial system operators to identify power grid constraints and determine how its solutions might improve network performance. These services often lead to sales of grid interconnection solutions for wind farms and solar power plants, and power quality systems for utilities and heavy industrial operations.
actiVAR Systems: The company’s actiVAR system is a fast-switching medium-voltage reactive compensation solution that utilizes passive, fast-switching, and transient-free switching devices. The actiVAR mitigates voltage sags and reduces large inrush currents associated with starting large medium-voltage motors across-the-line. Large motors require significant amounts of reactive power to start. The flow of VARs across the power system network results in voltage sags which cause power quality issues to nearby utility customers, as well as a reduction in the motors ability to start. Traditional solutions to solve these problems utilize complex and adjustable speed drives and synchronous transfer switchgear solutions. The solution is prevalent in the pump and compressors stations utilized in industrial trades. The company’s actiVAR sales process begins with the engineering and procurement companies during feasibility studies. The company identifies viable projects for this solution and assist with performance and rating calculations, which eventually lead to the adaption and purchase of the actiVAR solution.
armorVAR Systems: The company’s armorVAR system consists of conventionally switched medium-voltage metal-enclosed capacitor banks and harmonic filter banks. These systems are installed for reactive compensation, power factor correction, loss reduction, utility bill savings, and mitigation of common power quality concerns related to power converter-based generation and load devices. They are utilized in all industries, including renewables, industrial, utility, commercial, mining, and petro-chemical industries. The company’s armorVAR systems also support the base VAR requirements of renewable power plants and can include fully integrated D-VAR and D-VAR VVO solutions to form more advanced hybrid solutions that are more economical and easier to install.
Transformers and DC Rectifiers: The company’s custom transformers and rectifiers combine to form power electronic systems, which consists of heavy-duty industrial rectifier transformers and direct current (DC) rectifiers. These systems are installed to produce DC power for electrolytic, furnace, and special processes. They are utilized in all industries, including renewables, industrial, chemical, mining, and petro-chemical industries. The company’s power electronic systems also support renewable wind/solar power plants and can include fully integrated D-VAR, D-VAR VVO, actiVAR, and armorVAR solutions that are more economical and easier to install to form a complete power solution engineered to the client's specification.
D-VAR VVO: The company’s D-VAR VVO serves the distribution power grid market. VVO is designed to be a direct-connect 15 kilovolt class reactive power system for a utility's distribution network to optimally control voltage as distribution networks are increasingly impacted by distributed generation, such as roof top and community solar, and to correct disturbances caused by heavy transient loads. The company’s VVO target markets are electric distribution grids incorporating distributed generation, including where utility grid modernization attributes, such as the following are applicable: mandated efficiency upgrades, mass adoption of rooftop solar, community solar, utility-owned micro-grids, variable load conditions on the distribution grid and voltage regulations alternatives.
Power Supplies and Military-Grade Magnetics Applications: The company's Power Supplies play a vital role in electrostatic precipitator systems (ESP), helping utility and industrial customers reduce airborne particulate emissions and meet environmental compliance standards. In the defense sector, the company's Military Application Magnetics—such as transformers and inductors—are engineered for performance and durability across shipboard, land-based, and airborne electrical systems supporting the U.S. and allied operations. The company also provides high-capacity transformers designed for megawatt-scale industrial motor drives, ensuring reliable power for demanding industrial applications.
REG Systems: The company’s REG system has two primary applications that increase the reliability and the capacity of the urban infrastructure. For applications focused on reliability improvement, the REG system is used in a ring or loop configuration to interconnect nearby urban substations. This enables urban utilities to share transmission connections and excess station capacity, while controlling the high fault currents that naturally result from such interconnections, providing protection against the adverse effects that follow the loss of critical substation facilities in urban areas. The key component to the REG system is a breakthrough cable system that combines very high-power handling capacity with fault current limiting characteristics - features that are attributable to the company’s proprietary Amperium HTS wire.
Marine Market Overview
The company’s HTS-based degaussing system provides world class mine protection while reducing the weight of the degaussing system by an estimated 50-80% and reducing energy consumption.
The company’s HTS-based SPS degaussing system has been designed into the San Antonio-class amphibious warfare ship platform, with the first system delivered in January 2022 to be deployed on the USS Fort Lauderdale. AMSC and the U.S. Navy continue to collaborate on AMSC’s advanced HTS-based ship protection systems. The core components of the ship protection system are common and transferable to other applications being targeted for ship implementation.
Solutions for the Marine Market
The company provides advanced ship protection systems, power management, and power generation systems that are designed to help fleets increase system efficiencies, enhance warfare capabilities, and boost reliability, performance and security. The company’s systems support the U.S. Navy’s mission to electrify the fleet. The company’s systems allow for the ship to generate a large amount of electrical power and distribute the power through an onboard power system to a propulsion motor by way of a much smaller, lighter, and higher performing HTS cable system, enabling a more advanced, reliable, and secure solution with a smaller footprint. The company’s solutions include:
Ship Protection Systems: The primary focus of the company’s SPS has been degaussing systems. These systems reduce a naval ship’s magnetic signature, making it much more difficult for a mine to detect and damage a ship. Traditionally made of heavy copper wire, degaussing is required on all U.S. Navy combat ships. The company’s HTS advanced degaussing system is lightweight, compact, and often outperforms its conventional counterpart. This HTS system is estimated to enable 50-80% reduction in total degaussing system weight, offering significant potential for fuel savings or options to add different payloads. The core components of a degaussing system are transferable to other applications being targeted for ship implementation. The company’s SPS has been designed into the San Antonio class of amphibious assault vessels, with the first system delivered in January 2022 to be deployed on the USS Fort Lauderdale. The company is also providing SPS systems to the Royal Canadian Navy and seeking opportunities to propagate SPS throughout other allied navies, creating the potential for a relatively long-term revenue stream. Additionally, the company is developing a deployable mine countermeasure solution to enhance U.S. Navy capability to manage the threat of minefields.
Onboard Power Delivery Systems: The company is working on expanding HTS technology into the fleet through a variety of applications, including onboard power flow and management. The company’s HTS power cables enable high density energy transfer at unsurpassed efficiency levels in a compact, lightweight package.
Power Generation Systems: The company is also working on expanding HTS technology into the fleet through a variety of applications, including power generation and electric propulsion. The same HTS technology used in SPS and onboard power delivery systems when applied to rotating machines results in high power generators. This enables dramatically more power to be produced in the same machinery space used for conventional systems, which in turn affords the Navy additional power for high energy density weapons without significant structural changes to the ship.
Propulsion Systems: The company’s development work in power generation systems for the U.S. Navy extends to HTS-based electric power propulsion. Onboard power delivery systems and power generation systems, when applied to propulsion motors, enable the transition to high power dense electric propulsion systems. This is expected to make new ships more fuel-efficient and allow the Navy to free up space for additional war-fighting capability.
Solutions for the Wind Market
The company addresses the challenges of the wind power market by designing and engineering wind turbines, providing extensive support services to wind turbine manufacturers, and manufacturing and selling critical components for wind turbines.
Electrical Control Systems: The company provides full electrical control systems (ECS) to manufacturers of wind turbines designed by it. The company’s ECS regulate voltage, control power flows and maximize wind turbine efficiency, among other functions. As of March 31, 2025, the company had shipped core electrical components and complete ECS sufficient to power over 18,000 MWs of wind power.
Wind Turbine Designs: The company designs and develops entire state-of-the-art onshore and offshore wind turbines with power ratings of 2 MWs and higher for manufacturers who are in the business of producing wind turbines or who plan to enter the business of manufacturing wind turbines. These customers typically pay the company licensing fees, and in some cases royalties, for wind turbine designs, and purchase from it the ECS needed to operate the wind turbines.
Customer Support Services: The company provides extensive customer support services to wind turbine manufacturers. These services range from providing designs for customers’ wind turbine manufacturing plants to establishing and localizing their supply chains and training their employees on proper wind turbine installation and maintenance.
The company’s approach to the wind energy markets allows its customers to use its turbine engineering capabilities. These services and the company’s advanced ECS provide its customers with the ability to produce standardized or next-generation wind turbines at scale for their local market or the global market quickly.
Customers
The company serves customers globally through a localized sales and field service presence in its core target markets. The company has served over 100 customers in the grid market since its inception, including Commonwealth Edison, Huntington Ingalls Shipbuilding, Innomotics LLC, the U.S. Navy, Capital Power Corp., Targa Resources Corp., Micron Technology Inc., SSE plc in the United Kingdom, Consolidated Power Projects (Pty) Ltd in South Africa, Fuji Bridex in Singapore, and Ergon Energy in Australia. Additionally, the company’s sales personnel in the United States are supported by manufacturers' sales representatives. The company has designed wind turbines for and licensed wind turbine designs to wind turbine manufacturing customers, including Inox Wind Limited (Inox) in India and Doosan Heavy Industries (Doosan) in South Korea. In fiscal 2024, Inox accounted for 14% of its total revenues.
Sales and Marketing
The company’s strategy is to serve customers locally in its core target markets through a direct sales force operating out of sales offices worldwide. In addition, the company utilizes manufacturers’ sales representatives in the United States and Canada to market its products to utilities in North America. The sales force also leverages business development staff for the company’s various offerings, as well as its team of wind turbine engineers and power grid transmission planners, all of whom help to ensure that it has an in-depth understanding of customer needs and provide solutions for those needs.
Segments
The company segments its operations into two market-facing business units: Grid and Wind.
Grid: Through its Gridtec Solutions, the company’s Grid business segment enables electric utilities, industrial facilities, and renewable energy project developers to connect, transmit and distribute power with exceptional efficiency, reliability, security and affordability. The company provides transmission planning services that allow it to identify power grid congestion, poor power quality, and other risks, which help it determine how its solutions can improve network performance. These services often lead to sales of the company’s grid interconnection solutions for wind farms and solar power plants, power quality systems and transmission and distribution cable systems. The company also sells ship protection products to the U.S. Navy through its Grid business segment.
Wind: Through its Windtec Solutions, its Wind business segment enables manufacturers to field wind turbines with exceptional power output, reliability and affordability. The company supplies advanced power electronics and control systems, licenses its highly engineered wind turbine designs, and provides extensive customer support services to wind turbine manufacturers. The company’s design portfolio includes a broad range of drivetrains and power ratings of 2 megawatts (MWs) and higher. The company provides a broad range of power electronics and software-based control systems that are highly integrated and designed for optimized performance, efficiency, and grid compatibility.
Competition
The company faces competition from other companies offering FACTS systems similar to its D-VAR products. These include adaptive VAR compensators, Dynamic voltage restorers (DVRs), and STATCOMs produced by ABB, Hitachi, Siemens, Mitsubishi, and Ingeteam, and battery-based uninterruptable power supply (UPS) systems offered by various companies around the world.
The company faces competition from other companies offering medium-voltage metal-enclosed power capacitor banks and harmonic filter banks for use on electric power systems similar to its NEPSI products. These include Southern States, Controllix, Powerside, Elgin Power Solutions, Scott Manufacturing Solutions and QVARx.
The company faces competition from other companies offering DC power supply systems similar to its Neeltran products. These include SCR Controlled Rectifiers, IGBT-controlled choppers produced by ABB, Siemens, Friem, Dynapower, and Nidec offering systems around the world.
The company faces competition from other companies offering transformers and power supplies similar to its NWL products. These include industrial and military transformers produced by Espey Manufacturing & Electronics Corp., Hammond and Ocrev; and power supplies offered by Kraft Powercon, Andritz, Lonking Holdings, and Rico.
The company also faces indirect competition in the wind energy market from global manufacturers of wind turbines, such as Siemens Gamesa, Vestas, Envision and Suzlon. The company faces competition for the supply of wind turbine engineering design services from design engineering firms, such as Aerovide and W2E.
Research and Development
The company’s research and development (R&D) expenses included $11.4 million for fiscal 2024.
Patents, Licenses and Trade Secrets
An important part of the company’s business strategy is to develop a strong worldwide patent position in all of the company’s technology areas.
Grid Patents
The company has received patents and filed numerous additional patent applications on power quality and reliability systems, including its D-VAR products. The company’s products are covered by patents and patents pending worldwide on both its systems and power converter products. The company’s grid patents will begin to expire in 2027, with the latest set to expire in 2040.
HTS Patents
The company has obtained licenses to patents and patent applications covering some HTS materials. The company has non-exclusive rights to a fundamental U.S. patent (U.S. 8,060,169 B1) covering 2G and similar HTS wire and applications and may elect in the future to allow its rights under this license to lapse. In addition to its owned patents and patent applications in 2G HTS wire, the company has obtained licenses from MIT for the MOD process it uses to deposit the YBCO layer, and Alcatel-Lucent on the YBCO material. However, the company may have to obtain additional licenses to HTS materials. The company’s HTS wire patents will begin to expire in 2024, with the latest set to expire in 2041.
In addition to HTS wire patents, the company has extensive patents and patents pending covering applications of HTS wire, such as HTS fault current limiting technology, including its fault current limiting cable, HTS rotating machines and ship protection systems. The company’s HTS application patents will begin to expire in 2027, with the latest set to expire in 2040.
Wind Patents
Under its Windtec Solutions brand, the company designs a variety of wind turbine systems and license these designs, including expertise and patent rights, to third parties for an upfront fee, plus in some cases, future royalties. The company’s wind turbine designs are covered by patents and patents pending worldwide on wind turbine technology. The company has patent coverage on the unique design features of its blade pitch control system, which ensures optimal aerodynamic flow conditions on the turbine blades and improves system efficiency and performance. The company’s wind patents will begin to expire in 2025, with the latest set to expire in 2039.
History
American Superconductor Corporation was founded in 1987. The company was incorporated in 1987.
The Analyst Price Target shows the analysts’ low, high, and average target at a glance.
