WINDPOWER on its way to becoming the world's largest wind event
The WINDPOWER 2008 Conference and Exhibition took place from 1 to 4 June in Houston, Texas, USA. The WINDPOWER 2008 Conference programme had over 50 education sessions, and included over 350 speakers and moderators, and 150 poster presentations on wind energy topics. This year around 700 exhibitors (up from 420 last year) displayed their products and services and over 13,000 registered visitors attended the event.{access view=!registered}Only logged in users can view the full text of the article.{/access}{access view=registered}Compared to a few years ago the event is also becoming more international. On the exhibition floor there were several national pavilions, for instance from the UK, Taiwan and Denmark. Also many Korean companies, mainly manufacturers of towers and vertical wind turbines, were present at the show.
Turbine Manufacturers
The main manufacturers were all present. Last year Nordex returned to the US market after 4 years of absence and over the next few years Nordex will be spending around US$ 100 million to establish its own US production facilities for wind turbines and rotor blades. As early as 2009, the first locally produced 2.5MW wind turbines will be entering the US market.
Also REpower, after exhibiting last year for the first time, considerably increased the size of its booth. During the show the company announced it received an order for the delivery of 100 wind turbines of the MM92 type for the USA from American project developer enXco, a subsidiary of EDF Energies Nouvelles. Recently the company also has been awarded a contract for the delivery of 954MW for five projects in the Canadian province of Québec.
Acciona introduced its new AW-3000 with rated output of 3MW. For North America the new turbine will be produced in Acciona's US plant located in Iowa. Currently this facility, where the company also produces its 1.5MW turbine, has a capacity of 675MW per year and Acciona intends to expand this to 850MW per year.
In March, Vestas announced a decision to establish a blade production facility in Colorado, USA, as a result of the continuous progress of wind power in the American market. At full production, the plant will be able to produce approximately 1,200 blades per year.
Entering the wind business from different industries
Also several companies from other industries are trying their luck in the wind business. The Finnish company Vaisala, a well-known company in the meteorological industry, exhibited for the first time at WINDPOWER and showed its ultrasonic wind sensor for wind measurement applications.
Intermap Technologies enables government agencies and commercial enterprises worldwide to implement a wide range of geospatial solutions. For the wind business, Intermap's precise 3D elevation data includes highly accurate and current wide-area digital surface models (DSMs), digital terrain models (DTMs), orthorectified radar images (ORIs), and colour orthorectified radar images (CORIs), which are suitable for planning, constructing and maintaining wind energy generation facilities.
Because of the supply shortage, new companies are entering the business as well. For example new this year were Carraro O&K Antriebstechnik and ABM Drives with pitch and yaw drives.
Next year's event
To see and experience the full capacity of the show for yourself I suggest you attend next year's event. WINDPOWER 2009 Conference & Exhibition will take place from 7 till 10 June in Minneapolis, MN, USA. More information can be found at www.windpowerexpo.org.
Enjoy reading,
Floris Siteur
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