Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s largest wind-turbine maker, will increase production in the U.S. even after analysts including HSBC Holdings PLC cut forecasts for installations in the nation.
The Randers, Denmark- based company will expand its U.S. employee count to 4,000 “in the coming months,” from 2,300 now, chief executive Ditlev Engel said by phone from Seoul, South Korea. Last month, it said it will eliminate 3,000 jobs in Europe.
“The cheapest way to produce electricity in the United States from wind is to make it in the U.S.,” said Engel, who is in the South Korean capital to advise Group of 20 leaders on creating clean-energy jobs. “We have no plans to change the balancing of our capacity” beyond the European reductions announced Oct. 26, he said.
Vestas has spent more than $1 billion building four factories in Colorado to replace turbine imports in the U.S., the second-biggest market after China. HSBC last month pared its forecast for the U.S. wind market this year by 14 percent and by 33 percent next year. Bloomberg New Energy Finance has also slashed predictions.
This year in Colorado, Vestas opened a plant in Brighton making nacelles, the casings that hold the power-generating equipment. It also built the world’s largest wind-turbine- tower factory in Pueblo and added to its blade-manufacturing plant in Windsor.
Another blade plant is due to open next year in Brighton. That will give Vestas the capacity to make about 3,000 megawatts of turbines a year in the U.S., according to HSBC Global head of clean-energy research Robert Clover.
“To fill that capacity, Vestas would need to fill more than half the market,” Clover said in a telephone interview. “It looks challenging to have that plant fully loaded at the moment.”
