Siemens Invests in Expanding Wind Power
To read article on Siemens click "Siemens Invests" above. Quote from article below.
On Dec. 3, Siemens opened a factory in Hutchinson, Kan., to make nacelles — housings the size of a bus that sit atop wind turbine towers and hold the mechanical and generating equipment. Siemens already has a blade factory in Fort Madison, Iowa, which opened in 2007, and is planning a plant in Tillsonburg, Ontario, to supply blades for nearby wind farms.
The company’s goal is to become one of the top three suppliers of wind power equipment in the world, up from eighth or ninth now. Vestas Wind Systems, a Danish company that focuses solely on wind power, is the market leader.
To have any chance, however, requires a foothold in China, the world’s largest market for wind power, and one of the most difficult to enter because of government policies that favor local companies. In November, Siemens opened a factory in Shanghai, a city chosen in part because it is on the water and a good place from which to ship equipment for offshore wind parks, a niche in which Siemens is the No. 1 equipment supplier.
The Asian market is the largest and fastest growing for wind power, accounting for an estimated 44 percent of global capacity, according to IHS Emerging Energy Research. Europe is second, with 34 percent of global capacity and North America third with 19 percent.
Siemens is also planning factories in the emerging markets of India and Russia as well as in Britain where, despite an austerity budget, the government is strongly backing the development of offshore wind projects.
In the United States, makers of wind power equipment have had to contend with fickle government incentives and a plunge in the price of natural gas, which made wind energy less competitive. In addition, the financial crisis has made it harder for smaller operators to get loans to build wind parks.
“The U.S. was supposed to be one of the most attractive markets,” said Eduard Sala de Vedruna, a research analyst for wind power at IHS Emerging Energy Research. “It’s not going to be as attractive as it used to be.”
Like General Electric, the market leader in wind power in the United States, Siemens may have an advantage against upstarts because it has long supplied equipment for conventional power plants and transmission facilities run by big utility companies. Siemens also has a long history in countries like Russia and China, where the company sold telegraph equipment as early as 1872. end quote.
“Siemens already had some good relationships,” Mr. Sala de Vedruna said. “They understand the business of generating electricity.” end quote.
Unfortunately, because of the low price of natural gas in the U.S. ,wind power has actually less demand than expected. T. Boone Pickens found this out the hard way. So even though he advocates both natural gas and wind power he didn't expect natural gas prices to be so low as to make natural gas competitive with wind power. However, everyone knows that there is only somewhere between (at most) 20 to 40 years of oil left in the ground for all of earth. (Even less with the increases in China and India of the purchase of cars and trucks and the building of roads and increased use of plastic worldwide.) One of the things people don't realize is that when oil ends so will anything plastic if it isn't recycled somehow. So once oil is completely gone we will have recycled metal and wood and stone and other fiber materials but things like plastic, nylon, and all oil based fabrics etc. will be gone. Clothes will all have to be made from cotton, and wool and fibers of many kinds rather than be oil based at that point. And this will happen quite quickly over the next 10 to 20 years as the price of oil naturally increases as it depletes worldwide. So, in some ways the increase of the price of oil is a good thing because it will force the world to convert to solar, wind, and ocean power in order to survive at all. I wonder what the transition will be like worldwide?
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