Wind power hardware producers can’t keep up with demand
There is an inexhaustible supply of wind to drive
their blades, but materials needed to make wind turbines are limited and the
industry fears it will fail to keep pace with growing demand for the clean
energy source.
There is an inexhaustible supply of wind to drive their blades, but materials needed to make wind turbines are limited and the industry fears it will fail to keep pace with growing demand for the clean energy source. “We do whatever we can but it’s impossible to increase our (production) capacity overnight,” a spokesman for the Danish group Vestas told AFP.”
There is a gap between industrial capacity and demand, and it will take several years before we can fill the gap. Don’t expect miracles,” Peter Wenzel Kruze added.
Benefiting from spiralling oil prices and the popularity of green energy sources, wind farms — mostly on land but also offshore — have in recent years become an increasingly common sight throughout Europe…[and the U.S.].
Robert Gleitz, wind product chief at General Electric, explains that current supply problems have not affected major component parts of wind turbines such as blades, plinths or turbine pods.
Gleitz does however say that turbines ordered today would not be delivered until 2008 or possibly 2009.
The price of wind power has fallen steadily in the last 20 years.
“(Wind energy) technology produces 180 times the amount of electricity that it produced in the 80’s. It has matured and can compete with other forms of energy,” Valentiny said.
As we used to say — when I worked for a manufacturer in the middle of a healthy boom — “it’s a good problem”.
Posted: Mon - December 4, 2006 at 08:22 AM