rrcon

Our guys make 40-45 base, and the rest is O/T. Is that pay based on 2080 hours of work (40 hour weeks)?

 Most direct drive wind turbines are not megawatt class. Since the size of the rotor limits the speed it can rotate.

Wind engineer here!

The limitation of direct drive turbines is not the rotor speed, its design and validation of the large machines, the custom generator designs and safety systems. The older players don't want to invest because its a marginal performance benefit, and they make a considerable amount of money on O&M. Guess who sells your replacement gearbox and installs it? The new players are using it to place themselves ahead of the older designs.

Goldwind makes 1.5 & 2.5 MW PMDD turbines. Vestas has the V110 2mb, V112 3MW and V164 8MW. GE is announcing a 4MW unit.

Direct drive is far from "the standard", and its hard to determine the real benefit vs geared units.