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WEST BRANCH
Acciona starts production
Reporter: Gigi Wood
gigi@corridorbiznews.com
Turn, turn, turn.
This is the season for wind energy projects coming online in Iowa, with more to come. Wind energy is often making headlines these days as more announcements are made about large corporations selecting this state as their place to grow.
Some of the larger projects include the recent announcement of TPI Composites, a wind blade maker, which plans to build a large factory in Newton. Hendricks Industries, a wind turbine tower manufacturer, announced in October is constructing a production facility in Keokuk. Siemens Wind recently took over a vacated factory in Fort Madison to produce wind turbine blades. Clipper Windpower has hired more workers than initially expected to build turbines at its Cedar Rapids plant.
The mix makes Iowa the only state besides Texas to produce wind-energy turbines, towers and blades, said Brad Anderson, a spokesman for Gov. Chet Culver’s office. He added that Iowa leads the nation in attracting wind manufacturers.
“No one does it better than Iowa,” he said.
In West Branch, production work began earlier this month on Acciona Energy’s first wind turbine built in the United States.
“This is a milestone for us as a company to be able to begin production here in the U.S. and I’m very proud of the team that we have here,” said Adrian LaTrace, Acciona’s vice president of manufacturing in North America. “Again, (we have a) great workforce, great facility and I think we’ve got a great product. Now it’s time to get busy.”
Mr. LaTrace said he is not bothered by the growing number of wind energy companies moving into Iowa.
“I believe what you’re seeing are really the results of the vision the governor has set out for setting up Iowa as a technology corridor for the wind energy industry and more specifically Eastern Iowa,” he said. “I think this is consistent, it doesn’t change our perception. Actually this is very synergistic for all of us to have this industry cluster here.”
Those multi-ton turbines contain a lot of parts and companies like Acciona want parts makers near their new Iowa digs.
“Right now you’ve got the higher-level components: TPI building blades, Hendricks building towers, Siemens building blades, Clipper and ourselves building turbines,” he said. “You know there are going to be other component suppliers that at least in my expectation we'll see migrate here to Iowa also.”
The Iowa Department of Economic Development sponsored a wind-energy supply chain conference in September in Cedar Rapids to attract those types of companies to the area. While there is no word yet if any of the 100 companies that attended plan to move to Iowa, the state and its energy partners are always on the lookout.
“We’ve identified domestic suppliers as well as worked in concert with the state and are working to attract buyers from Europe,” Mr. LaTrace said. “We have made some progress identifying domestic suppliers and we are continuing to work with some of our European-based suppliers to see if they would set up operations here in the States and in my opinion, specifically here in Iowa.”
The governor has spent time attending wind energy conferences trying to attract small and large companies to Iowa, Mr. Anderson said.
“What he does is he actually walks around the conferences, goes booth-to-booth and talks to suppliers about Iowa, so he is definitely committed to that,” Mr. Anderson said.
Spain-based Acciona has hired about 30 of its 110 employees and expects to complete production on one turbine this month.
“You want to do this in a very controlled manner and so we had planned all along to ramp up our hiring through the middle of 2008,” he said.
Many of the initial production team were hired at local career fairs and were sent to Spain for five weeks of training earlier this fall.
“I think the quality of candidates that we’re finding are living up to the expectations for the decision to come to Iowa; the quality of workforce was one of the notable considerations for coming here,” Mr. LaTrace said. “I didn’t have anything to have them build on here so we had them over there working side-by-side with their colleagues in Spain and had them help us assemble turbines there.”
Once the West Branch site reaches full staff, the company plans to produce 400 turbines a year. Acciona took possession of the former Sauer Danfoss building in West Branch’s industrial park Nov. 26.
“We’re executing the plan that we laid out to the state and to our own company, having completed the factory at the end of the month of November,” he said. “We started production (Dec. 3), we will assemble our first turbine this month. That’s our expectation, to demonstrate our ability.”
Iowa ranks 10th nationally for wind-energy potential, as measured by annual energy potential in the billions of kWhs, factoring in environmental and land-use exclusions for wind class of 3 and higher, according to the American Wind Energy Association. The state ranks third, behind Texas and California, in the amount of wind-energy projects installed, by capacity.
Mr. Culver set a goal for the state to produce 2015 MW of wind energy by 2015. Renewable energy will continue to be a legislative priority for the governor through continued support of the Iowa Power Fund and the Iowa Values Fund, Mr. Anderson said. CBJ
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