The Japanese company has said that the move will lead to an investment of £100m over 5 years and an additional 200 green jobs.

Artemis, described by the Carbon Trust as “the leading light in the UK’s clean tech revolution” has developed new controllable hydraulic pumps and motors. Artemis Wind is developing the technology to be used in wind turbine transmissions.

Managing Director of Artemis Win Rampen said:

“This marks a huge step forward for the development of our game-changing technology. Drawing on the breadth and depth of Mitsubishi’s expertise and skills, AIP look forward to accelerating our research and development work with a view to our technology being used in turbines in UK and European waters by 2015.”

A new ‘Centre for Alternative Technology’ is also planned by Mitsubishi and has been welcomed by the the Scottish government.

Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond said:

“As well as delivering new jobs and investment, over the long-term this announcement could result of the creation of a major offshore wind turbine manufacturing site in Scotland.”

Siemens is looking at sites for the plant in the North East and East of England with good harbour access being a fundamental requirement.

The wind turbine company sees the UK offshore wind energy market as growing significantly in the future and says the 3rd round of offshore wind farm licensing by the Crown Estate will create a demand for 32 gigwatts.

Peter Loscher, President and CEO of Siemens AG said:

“With the new wind turbine production plant in the UK we’re pushing ahead with our strategy of investments in attractive growth markets for ecofriendly technology. In the foreseeable future the  wind power market in the UK will be characterized by major offshore projects, and we’ll extend our market leadership with the new production plant”

Siemens is one of the two biggest offshore wind turbine companies alongside Vestas and has already built 11 offshore wind farms, over half of these in the UK.  The company’s turbines also make up the largest onshore wind farm in Europe – Whitelee near Glasgow and Siemens say that around 40% of the wind energy in the UK is generated by their wind turbines.

The largest zones at Doggerbank (9000 Megawatts) and Norfolk (7200 MW) go to consortia giants Forewind and East Anglia Offshore Wind.  Forewind is made up of RWE renewables, Scottish and Southern Energy, Statoil and Statkraft.  East Anglia Offshore Wind is Scottish Power Renewables and Vattenfall Vindkraft.

Eddie O’Connor’s Mainstream Renewables and Siemans bagged the 4000 MW Hornsea zone, whilst SeaGreen Wind Energy Ltd equally owned by SSE Renewables and Fluor, won the Firth of Forth Zone.

Eon and Dutch utility Eneco were left with the smaller south of England coast sites off Brighton and the Isle of Wight.

Prime Minister, Gordon Brown MP said: “Our policies in support of offshore wind energy have already put us ahead of every other country in the world. This new round of licences provides a substantial new platform for investing in UK industrial capacity. The offshore wind industry is at the heart of the UK economy’s shift to low carbon and could be worth £75 billion and support up to 70,000 jobs by 2020.”

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband said: “Our island has one of the best wind energy resources in Europe and today’s news shows we’re creating the right conditions for the energy industry to invest in harnessing it. This is one of the strongest signals yet that the UK is locked irreversibly into a low carbon, energy secure prosperous future.”

The 3rd round of offshore wind development takes engineering and financing challenges to a new level.  Doggerbank is between 125 and 195 kilometres offshore with its outer limit aligned to UK continental shelf limit as defined by the UK Hydrographic Office.  The area involved is equivalent in size to North Yorkshire.

British Wind Energy Association CEO Maria McCaffery said: “Today’s announcement is a major leap forward in realising the potential for clean, green energy production through wind power: it sets the UK apart as the leading offshore wind energy producer not only in Europe but worldwide both in terms of total potential power generation from offshore, and the scale of new green collar employment opportunity”.

“We need to ensure the UK also benefits through a boost in manufacturing, engineering and skills: but this will only happen if additional action is taken by the Government through working actively to create coastal manufacturing hubs.  This will encourage wind energy manufacturing companies to locate in the UK and enable British businesses to take full advantage of the supply chain opportunities for the benefit of jobs and the UK economy as well as Britain’s energy security”.

The announcement confirmed earlier leaked information about which companies had secured the key sites.

The Hywind, a 2.3 megawatt (MW) floating wind turbine made by Siemens, combines technologies from both the wind farm industry and the oil and gas sectors, and was installed in June of this year. It is being tested off the coast of Norway for two years. Since the installation of the turbine new products are starting to emerge which would be dedicated to the technology.

The video below shows a specialist barge which could be used to transport and put into place floating wind turbines. This is but a small indicator of the potentially huge benefits of offshore wind energy when it comes to new business and green collar jobs.

The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has commissioned the 2.3 megawatt turbine on its National Technology Center site as part of an R&D project with Siemens.

The wind turbine has been commissioned in order to allow detailed investigations and monitoring – in what has been described as the biggest government-industry research partnership for wind energy generation ever undertaken in the U.S.

NREL Director Dan Arvizu said. “Under the cooperative research and development agreement we have in place, Siemens Energy, NREL and the U.S. Department of Energy will put this 2.3 megawatt turbine through all of its paces, in all kinds of conditions, in a rigorous testing regime that will continue for a minimum of three years, at a shared cost of $14 million.”

Barry Nicholls, senior vice president of Siemens Energy said “At Siemens, innovation is one of our core values. That’s why we are especially pleased to join forces with our nation’s leading wind research facility…This important new research program will help us further enhance the performance of our turbines and lower the cost of clean, wind-generated power, which in turn will help diversify the overall mix of power generation sources in the U.S.”

“Today begins a new era of research at NREL’s National Wind Technology Center,” said Arvizu. “With our partners at Siemens Energy, we will embark on a comprehensive R&D program that will pave the way for the even more advanced wind turbines of the future.”

Although similar to turbines currently being used to generate power, the Siemens wind turbine to be tested is a ‘late-stage prototype’ that features a new blade designed to capture more of the wind’s energy without increasing the loads that can cause wear on the other turbine parts. Testing of the Siemens 2.3-MW turbine will include structural and performance testing, acoustics and power quality testing.

Installation of the pilot turbine comes in the wake of Siemens’ decision to locate its own wind energy research and development centre in Boulder. Siemens expect to create 40 green collar jobs at the facility by 2013.

Turbine vital statistics

* Model – Siemens 2.3-101
* Production (NWTC Site) – 2,800 MWh/year
* Production (Typical Site) – 7,050 MWh/year
* Homes Powered (Typical Site) – 630
* Tower Height – 80 m / 262.5 ft
* Rotor Diameter – 101 m / 331.4 ft
* Swept Area – 8k m2 / 86.2 ft2
* Total Height – 131 m / 428.1 ft

SOURCE Siemens Energy
Web site: http://www.siemens.com/energy/

http://www.nrel.gov/

The Guardian’s Terry Macalister reported yesterday that PM Gordon Brown wants Siemens to open a factory in the UK as soon as possible. The move would provide a renewable energy manufacturing base and green collar jobs. The goverment is desperate to secure economic benefits from its huge potential wind energy market.

According to the Guardian, the prime minister will meet CEO of Siemens, Peter Löscher to provide some certainty and comfort on the delivery of a large scale offshore wind energy market. This lack of confidence in wind energy market growth was what led to the Vestas decision to abandon the UK.

A Siemens offshore wind representative said that the company will be closely watching what comes out of the Crown Estate’s Round 3 offshore wind farm license announcements which are imminent.

“We are looking at two locations [for factories] in the UK, one in Denmark and one in Germany. Great Britain has the advantage of Round 3, which could result in a huge market” reported the Guardian.

The north east and the east of England have been mooted as potential factory locations. These regions are closest to where the majority of Round 3 offshore wind farm search areas are located.

Grants are also being handed out to companies both by the UK government and the European Commission. Last week, the UK government gave Siemens over £1m for the development of an offshore wind power “converter”.

This week, the European Commission announced a budget of €53bn to fund research and new product development from 2007-2013. The cash is expected to deliver new breakthrough technology, new product development programmes and innovation capability for supply chains.

Some areas in the wind energy sector currently available for funding include the development of very large off-shore wind turbines, improving technology reliability, improving the effectiveness of remote maintenance, and the delivery of stable power into the grid.

An Indicative EU budget per project of €5M has been set with a deadline for proposals of 15th of October 2009.

Other related grants being offered are for energy storage systems which include technology improving the integration of variable renewable electricity energy sources such as wind, wave power and photovoltaic’s. Large-scale demonstration of smart electricity distribution networks with distributed generation is also being incentivised.

EWEA say that offshore wind energy has the potential to power Europe 7 times over and that the industry is growing 28% a year. A European wind energy “supergrid” would help create the multi-billion euro industry and thousands of new green collar jobs.

The Departments of Treasury and Energy made the announcement further to the establishment of a Congress programme with roots in the economic recovery package put together earlier this year. This element of the recovery package aims to boost green energy investment and employment. The grants will be issued in lieu of tax credits of nearly $500 million for 10 wind energy projects in Minnesota, New York, Maine, Pennsylvania Oregon, and Texas.

AWEA Senior Vice President for Public Policy Rob Gramlich said “For these grantees and many other projects that are preparing their applications, we are seeing business activity picking up and turbine and parts orders being sent all the way up the value chain”

“That activity had all but dried up and it is very encouraging to see this turnaround underway. Time will tell if that market signal is strong enough to keep the 85,000 people working in the wind industry employed for the next couple of years.”

The grants are aimed at incentivising the healthy progression of the wind energy and other renewable energy sectors and will step in the footsteps of the production tax credit (PTC) that has up until the last few years been the stimulus for wind energy projects. The recession and the problems securing credit have resulted in the PTC being practically ineffective.

The US took the position of world wind energy leader this year creating 35,000 new green collar jobs across the country. Figures for 2009 indicate a reduction in growth due to difficulties with wind energy project financing. The AWEA has been pushing for a national renewable electricity standard (RES) as a way to give confidence to financial markets about the U.S. commitment to renewable energy. In turn this political committment would help meet President Barack Obama’s goal to double renewable energy production over the next few years.

The RES committment would increase the US electricity supply coming from renewable energy sources to at least 4 percent in 2011-12 and 20 percent in 2021-39.

In an interview on BBC’s ‘The Report’, Vestas’ VP Peter Kruse said the UK’s limited wind energy market is a problem for wind turbine manufacturers. Kruse said “Don’t blame London, because your government is doing a lot, but if people do not want turbines locally then you can put as many incentives as you want on the table.”

The Vestas factory on the Isle of Wight is heading for closure and the company is blaming poor demand for wind turbines, mainly due to local planning problems.

The Report also includes an interview with Energy & Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband in response. Miliband said “In 10 years’ time people will look back and think, ‘gosh, there was a huge fuss about this idea of renewable energy and wind energy but actually it was the right thing to do’

“I think we are going to be able to say to people, whether it’s in relation to offshore or onshore wind power, ‘if you want to be a centre for green manufacturing then we have to go ahead with the actual generation of wind power’”

Many believe the UK risks missing out on a slice of the green collar economy pie if it does not take some serious steps towards welcoming the green energy revolution. On a follow up Radio 4 programme this evening, Mike Carter from wind turbine manufacturer REpower said that the fact that there are 0 manufacturers in the UK demonstrates it is not an attractive place to be despite Ed Milibands confidence that clean tech companies will come.

Those in the industry say the UK energy strategy and planning system needs to be more dynamic and flexible. Renewable energy manufacturers will only be attracted if we offer a more efficient planning system alongside strong financial incentives.

The staff at Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of White are being laid off due to the closure of the factory in the Island’s main town of Newport.  Banners saying “Jobs worth fighting for” hung outside of the building demonstrating the strength of feeling of both trade unionists and environmentalists. One worker said “this is a factory that should not be closing down, this is a factory making money”.

The Vestas turbine blade factory on the Isle of White is the only wind turbine factory in the UK and employs 600 people. The closure will add to the growing number of unemployed on the Island. The factory is following the same footsteps as Vestas’ previous factory in Cambeltown which briefly employed up to 92 people. The company set up in the town after being granted a £12m public subsidy and cited reasons including “obsolete technology” for closing.

Vestas reported a quarterly sales rise of 59% to 1.11bn euros but say that it can produce the turbine blades cheaper in the US.

The protest ironically took place just after the release of the government’s new renewable energy strategy which aims to create thousands of green collar jobs. The UK currently buys in wind turbine components from countries with more established and faster moving wind industries such as Germany and Denmark.