Wind

'Momentum picking up' | Vestas wins 1.6GW of onshore wind orders in growing US market

Flurry of announcements Friday confirms forecasts of boom in American sector before year's end

. Laura Beane, CEO of Vestas US.
. Laura Beane, CEO of Vestas US.Foto: LinkedIn

Danish turbine OEM Vestas gained a flurry of US onshore wind orders totalling nearly 1.6GW, confirming recent forecasts by company executives of a spree before year’s end.

“Momentum is picking up,” Vestas CEO Henrik Anderson said during an earnings call last month.
The four new orders announced Friday follow 509MW contracted for US projects in November.
The US onshore market “is moving ahead in a quite good way,” Vestas chief financial officer Hans Martin Smith told Recharge.

The new orders are for either 4MW or 4.5MW turbines, the US market segment where Vestas dominates.

The turbine maker has a 4.1GW pipeline in US onshore wind, around 31% of the total market, and another 4GW of preferred supplier agreements in US offshore wind.

It is also ramping US manufacturing with a $40m investment at two Colorado factories to produce the V163-4.5MW wind turbine, the OEM’s newest for the US onshore market, and expects to hire between 800 and 1,000 local employees.

The Danish OEM will supply 89 V150-4.5 MW turbines for developer AES’ West Camp wind project in Navajo County, Arizona, totalling 401MW.

The order “represents a key milestone for the state of Arizona, and we look forward to partnering with AES to continue the state’s growing acceleration of clean energy,” said Laura Beane, president of Vestas North America.
Virginia-based AES has lofty ambitions to add 25-30GW of new renewables capacity in North and South America by 2027.

Delivery is planned to begin in the fourth quarter of 2024 with commissioning scheduled in 2025.

The largest is a 603MW order for 134 V163-4.5MW turbines for an undisclosed project, with delivery scheduled for the end of 2025.

The OEM will also supply 100 V163-4.5MW turbines to an American developer in a 450MW contract, with delivery expected in the second quarter of 2025.

The smallest is a 143MW order for V150-4MW turbines, likewise for an undisclosed project, with delivery in the third quarter of 2025.

All orders include supply, delivery, and commissioning of the turbines, as well as multi-year service agreements.

The turbine maker is on a roll not just in the US market with the announcement of a major contract in European offshore wind to supply 52 V236-15.0 units for Shell and Mitsubishi-owned Eneco’s Ecowende’s giant new project in Dutch waters.
Ecowende placed a firm order for the project on the Hollandse Kust West (VI) site auctioned off by the Netherlands’ government a year ago.

The plant will have a 760MW grid-connected capacity with another 20MW “to use the connection capacity as efficiently as possible, even when production is lower”, said Vestas.

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Published 22 December 2023, 18:43Updated 22 December 2023, 18:43
AmericasUSVestasAES