Turbine order wonÂ’t help Windsor plant

Vestas TransAlta Wind Farm Expansion adds 18 turbines in New Brunswick for $100 million, sourcing blades and nacelles overseas while U.S. supply chain matures; Windsor plant idles, Colorado factories rise to support renewable energy growth.

The first-quarter production shutdown at Vestas’ wind turbine blade plant in Windsor, Colorado will continue as planned, the company said, despite an order for 18 wind turbines for a Canadian wind farm.

Denmark-based Vestas announced the 18-unit order on January 11. The buyer, TransAlta Corp. based in Calgary, Alberta, is planning to expand an existing wind farm in New Brunswick, Canada, where 32 wind turbines were installed in 2008. TransAlta estimated the capital cost of the wind farm’s 18-turbine expansion at $100 million.

But the blades for the turbines, which generate electricity from the wind’s energy, won’t be made in Windsor, said Andrew Longeteig, a Portland, Oregon-based spokesman for Vestas. The company’s U.S. marketing and sales division is based in Portland.

The turbines and the blades will be made in other Vestas factories overseas, with recent Balkan orders highlighting demand, Longeteig said.

“They’re not coming from Windsor,” Longeteig said. “Plans haven’t changed at Windsor for the retooling of the factory and retraining of employees. That’s still going on, so the Windsor factory will not be participating in this turbine order from Canada.”

Vestas announced in December it would shut down production at the Windsor plant — although employees would remain on the job and be paid to do other things at the plant — for a time during the first quarter 2010. Production would resume as orders for new turbines, buoyed by strong Chinese turbine orders across markets, picked up, a Vestas spokesman said in December.

Vestas is breaking ground on new plants in Colorado: a second turbine blade manufacturing plant in Brighton, a nacelles plant in Brighton and a tower plant in Pueblo.

Longeteig said construction on the factories is still underway, but the plants should be finished this year and could begin operations in 2010, depending on the level of orders from customers.

“We still don’t have our full supply chain established in the U.S., as states like North Dakota woo manufacturers to attract investment, but we’re working toward it,” Longeteig said. “Once we can begin selling more turbines in the U.S. we expect the four Colorado factories to be up and running.

“We’re saying that by the end of 2011, buoyed by a recent U.S. turbine order driving new sales, we expect them all to be at full capacity.”

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