The Birth of a U.S. Wind Power Manufacturing Industry

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The three major nacelle internals are gearboxes, generators and drives. The first U.S. facility dedicated to such manufacturing, Winergy Drive Systems in Elgin, Illinois, came online in 2009. Among the many facilities in planning stages, Germany’s internationally recognized mechanical system maker ZF announced a contract with Vestas, the world’s biggest turbine manufacturer, to provide gearboxes from a Gainesville, Georgia, facility now under construction.

The U.S.’s wind manufacturing ecosystem extends from coast to coast and border to border. There are online or planned facilities in rust belt states like Michigan and Ohio, Midwest states like Kansas and Iowa, where youthful rural populations now have an alternative to moving to urban centers for opportunity, and in Southern states like Texas and Arkansas, where manual labor now has an alternative to unemployment.

An example of the potential to revitalize U.S. manufacturing is the urgent need to develop new domestic foundry capacity for casting utility-scale turbine parts. Few existing foundries are up to the demands of casting mainframes, hubs, rotor shafts and other parts that can weigh 30 tons or more. This is expected to be a huge investment opportunity.

But no such foundry capacity expansion has so far been undertaken, according to AWEA, because federal policy has failed to provide a long-term signal warranting the needed substantial investment. AWEA has, for many years and particularly since President Obama came to office, pushed hard for such a long-term policy signal in the form of a national Renewable Electricity Standard that would require regulated U.S. utilities to obtain a significant portion of their power from renewable sources by 2020 or 2025.

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