About Second Wind

About Second Wind

About Second Wind, Inc.: Company Profile

Second Wind staff pose around the Triton Wind ProfilerSecond Wind’s mission is to advance the use of wind data to make wind energy profitable for the businesses and investors who create wind energy plants, painless for the customers who use our products, and practical for the businesses, consumers and utilities that benefit from wind energy as a low-cost and environmentally desirable source of power.

Second Wind prides itself on technology innovation with its in-house hardware development and software engineering talent. The company continues to develop ground-breaking products related to wind data. Our wind resource assessment data loggers and systems are now used in over 40 countries worldwide, including Antartica and the Sahara. Most recently, Second Wind developed the Triton Wind Profiler, which uses advanced sodar technology to provide more wind assessment data than can be acquired by conventional means. Second Wind has an industry-wide reputation for innovative, reliable technology and excellent customer support.

Key Personnel

Larry Letteney Larry Letteney
CEO

Susan Giordano Susan Giordano
General Manager

Walter Sass Walter Sass
Executive Chair and CTO

Peter Gibson Peter Gibson
VP of Sales
Enda Bloomer Enda Bloomer
CFO

Dan Vitti
VP of Operations
 
 

Kenneth Cohn Kenneth Cohn
Founding Partner
 

A total of 50 employees staff Second Wind’s headquarters and manufacturing facility, with an industry-wide reputation for innovative, reliable technology and excellent customer support. Inc. magazine has included Second Wind two years in a row on its new Inc. 5,000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States. The company’s ranking was based on a 60% growth in revenue from 2004­-2007; both years, Second Wind was the only business-to-business wind organization in the energy industry category. In December 2007, Second Wind secured $4 million in second round financing from Good Energies, a leading global investor in the renewable energy and energy efficiency industry. In 2008, the company received a $500,000 working capital loan through the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC), the state’s development agency for renewable energy and the innovation economy.

Locations

Main Headquarters Manufacturing Operation Service Locations:
366 Summer Street
Somerville, MA 02144
24 Dane Street
Somerville, MA 02144
Sweetwater, Texas
Poole, United Kingdom

History

Second Wind was founded in 1980 by Walter Sass and Kenneth Cohn. Sass and Cohn – engineers who have been friends since grade school – decided the emerging field of wind energy would provide an opportunity for them to leverage their engineering skills to benefit the environment. They recognized that for wind energy to succeed, the industry needed more than wind turbines. Wind developers also needed software and hardware that would help them to measure wind accurately at prospective sites, and monitor successful turbine performance at established wind farms. The company’s first headquarters was the spare bedroom in Sass’s home.

Second Wind has maintained a presence in wind resource assessment since introducing the first data logger designed specifically for wind prospecting in 1981. In 1985, the company tackled wind farm monitoring with the introduction of the first Second Wind wind farm monitoring system. In 2007, Second Wind took another step forward by launching the Triton™ Sonic Wind Profiler, which uses the company’s advanced sodar technology for wind profiling.

Key Products
Triton™ Sonic Wind Profiler re-invents sodar technology for wind assessment. It captures accurate wind data from any height, in any weather, at any location, without being attended. Readings look like anemometry results, with no expert analysis required. The Triton became commercially available in April 2008.

Nomad® 2 Data Logger is a reliable tool for acquiring data from up to 12 anemometers and up to 8 wind vanes, temperature sensors, or other meteorological devices. Thousands of Nomad 2s are in service at sites as diverse as Antarctica and Sub-Saharan Africa. Nomad 2s feature advanced operation, low power consumption, field reprogammability, and Windows™-compatible compact flash cards for data storage.

The C3 Anemometer measures the wind speed with confidence. This 3-cup anemometer is designed for durability and reliability, with new materials and a manufacturing process that is RoHS-compliant, involving no toxic metals. Available calibrated (model C3) or uncalibrated (model C3C).

SkyServeSM Satellite Wind Data Service provides reliable data transmission from remote locations, using the Globalstar satellite network. Bundled with the Triton profiler or the Nomad 2 Data Logger, SkyServe combines weather data with precise GPS time/location stamps.

Phaser® Digital Power Transducer is a highly accurate instrument for three-phase electric power measurement. Inexpensive enough to replace analog transducers, the Phaser is easy to use, from basic metering configuration to output signal scaling. The Phaser measures each phase voltage and current over ten thousand times per second.

Markets Served
Second Wind has a sales force in North America along with resellers in Europe and Asia. Products are placed in more than 40 countries and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.

Partners / Investors

Our lead investor, Good Energies, is a leading global investor in renewable energy and energy efficiency industries. Please click Partners/Investors to read more.

Company Milestones

Date Milestone
1980 Second Wind begins operations.
1981 The AL-2000 Data Logger, the first successful application-specific data logger, introduced.
1985 Sass and Cohn identified a need in the industry for a monitoring system for wind farms that would allow the customer to view a collection of turbines as a single power plant. The Second Wind System – the first third party monitoring system was quickly adopted by leading wind energy developers in the United States.
1986 Second Wind designed what became the NRG 200P Wind Vane.
1991 The Nomad 1 Data Logger introduced.
1994 Second Wind won a research contract from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to develop a next-generation wind farm monitoring system, the Advanced Distributed Monitoring System (ADMS).
1997 The company won its first contract to provide Florida Power & Light with Phaser power transducers, used in distribution automation. This marked the company’s successful diversification from wind power generation monitoring into substation automation. Phasers now equip substations throughout FPL’s entire service territory.
2003 The Nomad 2 Data Logger released.
2004 Second Wind and the ADMS recognized by the American Wind Energy Association with a Technical Achievement Award.
2005 Second Wind celebrates 25 years as a leader in providing electronics and software to the wind energy industry.
2007 The Triton Sonic Wind Profiler, SkyServe Satellite Wind Data Service and the Model C3 Anemometer introduced.
2008 The Model PV-1 Wind Vane released.

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