European Wind Turbine Production Gets Busy

According to Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland), Siemens Energy (Erlangen, Germany) is hoping to capitalize on the U.K.’s massive plans for offshore wind development by announcing that it intends to invest £80 million ($121 million) in the country to build a production plant for offshore wind turbines.

A memorandum of understanding has been signed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Peter Löscher, president and CEO of Siemens AG, with Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband and Business Secretary Peter Mandelson. Siemens Energy, a division of Siemens AG (Munich, Germany), is evaluating sites in the east and northeast of the country with a particular focus on harbor infrastructure. The new plant will employ up to 700 people. Siemens Energy has a strong track record in the growing offshore wind market, having completed 11 projects with a combined capacity in excess of one gigawatt (GW). Half of this capacity is in the U.K.

Rival General Electric Company (Fairfield, CT) recently announced plans to spend more than £98 million ($148 million) to build an offshore wind manufacturing plant in the U.K., which the company claims could provide up to 2,000 jobs by 2020. The GE and Siemens announcements follow on from the government’s recent announcement of a competition worth £60 million ($90.7 million) to modernize the country’s ports in an effort to attract companies involved in building offshore windfarms.

“With the new wind turbine production plant in the U.K., we’re pushing ahead with our strategy of investments in attractive growth markets for eco-friendly technology,” said Löscher. “In the foreseeable future, the wind power market in the U.K. will be characterized by major offshore projects, and we’ll extend our market leadership with the new production plant.”

The U.K. awarded its Round 3 offshore wind contracts in January this year, which will see more than 25 GW of renewable energy added to the grid in the coming decade. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband commented: “This is a vote of confidence from one of the foremost companies in the offshore wind sector looking to set up a base in the U.K., more proof that we’re exploiting the great natural resource that we have and creating the right conditions to attract investment. Our investment will help create jobs and help us meet our renewable energy targets.”

The U.K. wind market is a hive of activity at present, with numerous companies setting their sights on being well positioned for the huge investment in offshore wind expected in the next 10 years. Mitsubishi Power Systems Europe Limited (London, England), a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Limited (Tokyo, Japan), is planning to invest about £100 million ($151 million) in a new U.K.-based wind turbine research and development project by 2014. The government is backing the move with £30 million ($45.3 million), and the new facility will create up to 200 jobs.

Andreas Goss, Siemens’ chief executive in the U.K., commented: “The U.K. government has created a stable framework to attract inward investment in renewables and offshore wind power in particular. The competition for land development, announced in the Budget last week, gives us confidence that the appropriate U.K. port infrastructure can be made available to support our production plans. With the anticipated growth in the renewables market, there is potential for expansion of the facility in the future.”

General Electric is also planning to invest ?340 million ($460 million) to expand its wind energy operations in Europe, primarily in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany and Norway. The expansion will involve the production, engineering and services sectors.

The decision is based on Europe’s growing demand for offshore wind and is backed by the development of the company’s state-of-art 4-megawatt (MW) Direct Drive Wind Turbine. GE describes the turbine as the next generation in wind turbines, and the model is the highest-rated GE turbine to date.

The turbine employs special drive trains and related control technologies obtained from ScanWind Group AS (Trondheim, Norway), a recently acquired GE subsidiary. The new turbines will be based on the revolutionary technology that does not use gearboxes. A pilot project demonstrating the concept has been functional at Hundhammerfjellet in Norway for more than five years. The pilot uses ScanWind’s initial Direct Drive turbine unit.

The expansion plans cover four European countries. Norway has been selected as the testing and demonstration site for the new offshore Direct Drive turbine. GE’s plans for Norway include the creation of a new Offshore Technology Development Center in Oslo. The company has teamed up with the Nowitech Research Center in Norway for joint research in the offshore wind sector. GE will be investing about ?75 million ($101 million) over the next six years to augment offshore wind business in the country, creating about 100 jobs in the process.

In Germany, expansion operations will involve uprating the wind turbine manufacturing unit in Salzbergen, and enhancing the GE Global Research Center at Munich. The company is also planning to develop an Engineering Center in the city of Hamburg. The center will focus on technology advancements, application engineering and product development. Investments through 2016 in Germany will be about $105 million ($142 million) and will help create about 100 new jobs.

As mentioned earlier, GE is looking to invest about $110 million ($148 million) through 2020 in the U.K., which will likely function as an integrated hub for the company’s offshore wind business in Europe. The company is planning to set up an offshore wind turbine manufacturing facility in U.K. and establish application and service engineering facilities in the country. GE will eventually draw partner firms and other offshore wind equipment suppliers for the manufacturing plant into the country, where conditions have become favorable to revive the offshore wind business. The expansion exercise in the U.K. is likely to generate about 2,000 jobs.

A new pilot project at the Gothenberg port to demonstrate GE technology and the Conceptual and Systems Design Center at Karlstad figure among the projects lined up in Sweden. GE will also work together with the Chalmers Wind Energy Centre in Gothenburg on related technologies. About ?50 million ($67.6 million) has been earmarked for the Swedish projects, which are expected to create 50 jobs.

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