Daniel McGahn
Analyst · Roth Capital Partners
Thanks, Brion, and good morning, everyone. I will begin today by providing an overview of our financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 2017, which ended December 31, 2017. John Kosiba will then provide a review of our financial results for the third quarter and guidance for the fourth fiscal quarter, which will end March 31, 2018. Following John's comments, we will open up the line for questions.
Third quarter revenues were in line with our expectations. Inox won nearly 30% or 300 megawatts of the first national auction and 30% or 300 megawatts of the second national auction in India. We anticipated our customer, Inox, will be commencing production in the third quarter for orders awarded during the first national auction in February 2017. However, Inox was working to execute contracts for the supply of turbines to its wind farm development partners. Inox had not put these contracts in place early enough for us to experience the ECS demand we expected during the third quarter. Our understanding is that these contracts are now in place, and Inox is expected to be in position to ramp up production potentially in Q4 and into Q1.
Inox's backlog has returned to healthy levels and their expectation is for it to grow from here. The third national auction or SECI-3 is planned to be taking place this quarter. SECI-3 is expected to be for a total of 2,000 megawatts of wind power. The Indian government is anticipating a fourth auction of 2,000 megawatts also this quarter during the month of March 2018. We are seeing signs of a recovery and continue to be optimistic about the Indian wind market. The new policies are expected to enable the overall Indian wind business, to possibly reach higher levels than previously attained. Inox has also been winning auctions at a higher historical rate.
We are also positioning ourselves to potentially diversify our wind business. We entered into an agreement for our 5.5-megawatt offshore wind turbine design with South Korea's Doosan Heavy Industries. South Korea's state-owned company, Korean Offshore Wind Power is developing the Southwestern Offshore Wind Project, a 2,500 megawatt development. Doosan is the engineering procurement contractor and wind turbine supplier for this project's first phase, a phase of 60 megawatts, which is expected to come online in 2019. This agreement expands Doosan's offshore wind turbine product line of 3-megawatt turbines to include 5.5-megawatt turbines.
AMSC is the exclusive supplier of Electrical Control Systems to Doosan's 5.5-megawatt offshore wind turbines. We received our first ECS order for 5.5-megawatt wind turbines from Doosan and announced it last month. This is an important milestone as it demonstrates their ability to jump start production for this product. We believe that this opens up another business opportunity for us in Korea as well as the global offshore wind market and is expected to allow for further potential diversification of future revenues within our wind business.
The third quarter saw record Grid revenues. Additionally, we anticipate strong fourth quarter revenues for our Grid business. We expect to achieve our fiscal 2017 objective of growing our Grid revenues year-over-year. We are diversifying our business by growth through grid. And as you know, D-VAR is a large contributor to our Grid business. In the third quarter of fiscal 2017, our D-VAR business was supported by a strong base of projects in the renewable and industrial segments. During the third quarter, we supported a renewable turnkey project with wind turbine maker, Vestas. The catalyst of our recent D-VAR industrial segment growth comes from mines, mills and semiconductor fabs, which require clean reliable power. This has been a focus area for us and we are seeing the benefits of this focus.
On the last conference call, we announced we had shipped our preproduction VVO units to utilities in the United States. We now have commissioned VVO units operating on multiple sites at utilities throughout the U.S. Our VVO pipeline is developing nicely. We expect additional commercial shipments beginning as early as the first quarter of fiscal 2018.
Regarding our Resilient Electric Grid, or REG product, we continue to make progress with utilities. While our negotiations with ComEd and Chicago are progressing, we are most excited about larger REG opportunities with other utilities that have a substantial, yet unique need for our REG system. There are issues facing utilities that simply cannot be solved using conventional power delivery systems. We believe our REG system can address those unique needs in a way that makes economic sense to utilities. We are working to help utilities understand that REG uniquely solves problems that are a priority today. We will report back to you just as soon as we can on this large market opportunity.
Providing a brief update on our business with the U.S. Navy, we have begun shipping the long lead-time items for USS Fort Lauderdale, also known as LPD 28. We anticipate our initial revenues from this order will be recorded in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017. We anticipate shipping additional long lead-time items during fiscal 2018. We continue to pursue additional ship platforms for our Ship Protection Systems with the Navy. We believe the Navy understands that our superconductor-based systems are an enabling technology that will support their efforts to electrify the fleet.
I'll turn the call over to John Kosiba to review our financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 2017 and provide guidance for the fourth fiscal quarter, which will end March 31, 2018. John?