Vestas: Farming the Wind

Wind-turbine maker Vestas expands operations along the Front Range

Construction of three Vestas plants for wind-turbine components has brought thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions in construction dollars to several Front Range cities.

Photo Courtesy Of Vestas Wind Systems

Danish wind-energy giant Vestas continues to build new facilities and add jobs up and down the Front Range with the ongoing construction of new component plants in Brighton and Pueblo. The $700-million total investment by Vestas will create nearly 2,500 new jobs in Colorado.

The wind-turbine maker set up shop here because it says that America’s wind resources are among the best in the world. Forbes magazine reports that the U.S. market accounted for 22% of Vestas’ $8.8 billion in total revenue last year, including the 725 turbines built in the U.S. They generated a combined capacity of 1.3 gigawatts of energy, the equivalent of a large coal-fired power plant.

The Vestas Blade Facility in Windsor, completed by Mortenson Construction last year, was the company’s first North American manufacturing facility. The first phase of the $42.7-million, fast-track project was completed in less than eight months to allow Vestas to begin producing blades quickly, with a five-phase turnover of the 230,000-sq-ft facility.

Mortenson was awarded the project in April 2007, and the first TCO was received on Jan. 25 to allow Vestas to produce its first blade on Feb. 1, 2008.

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The design-build, virtually modeled project was built on an 80-acre site near 6,200 ft of railroad tracks used to transport the 120-ft-long, 8.2-ton blades. The buildings include offices, blade mold-form areas, blade paint booths and cranes to lift and transport the blades. The facility can produce more than 1,200 blades per year.

Mortenson recently completed the second phase of work on the Windsor plant, an approximately $40-million, 175,000-sq-ft expansion of the manufacturing and administrative areas. It essentially doubles the size of the plant and accommodates recent advancements in the way the blades are made.

Mortenson also started construction last November on Vestas’ next-generation blade-manufacturing facility in Brighton. The $70-million, fast-track project will build 500,000 sq ft of buildings for blade assembly, materials handling, storage and offices. It can produce up to 2,000 blades a year.

In 2008, Vestas built 725 wind turbines in the U.S., generating a combined capacity of 1.3 gigawatts. (Photo courtesy of Vestas Wind Systems A/S)

Hensel Phelps Construction Co. of Greeley is building an accompanying nacelle plant in Brighton. The nacelle factory, where the turbine housing containing the gear box, generator and transformer is assembled, will be Vestas’ first in the U.S. It can produce up to 1,400 nacelles a year.

Vestas will employ around 650 people at the blade factory and nearly 700 at the nacelle plant once both factories are fully operational in 2010.

Tower Assembly Down south in Pueblo, Denver’s PCL Construction Services will put the finishing touches later this month on a $250-million tower assembly plant for Vestas that it started last October.

The new campus on the southern edge of Pueblo includes a 460,000-sq-ft production facility where the tower sections will be made, a 260,000-sq-ft surface treatment plant for finishes and a 115,000-sq-ft internals building where the hardware will be installed in sections.

Each tower is 300 ft tall, with a 14-ft diameter base and weighs a couple of hundred tons. At full production, the plant will require nearly 200,000 tons of steel per year to produce the towers.

The assembled towers are then loaded onto railroad cars at the Union Pacific rail spur that runs next to the factory and shipped all over the United States.

Vestas has nearly $700 million in wind-turbine manufacturing projects currently under construction or recently completed in Colorado, bringing thousands of construction and new-energy jobs to the state. (Photo courtesy of Vestas Wind Systems A/S)

The 800,000-sq-ft facility can produce around 1,000 tower assemblies per year, says Daniel Krieger, site manager for Vestas. At completion, it will be the world’s largest tower assembly plant and employ up to 550 people, he says.

Vestas is about to start construction on a 30,000-sq-ft administration building on the same site as part of the current package. In addition to office space, it will house a full production kitchen, locker rooms with showers and a canteen for plant employees.

The company is seeking a TCO for it in March 2010. Construction of the administration building will complete development on Vestas’ Pueblo manufacturing campus for now.