Gamesa plans to sail into a prosperous China future

With China planning to expand its offshore wind power capacity to 5 gw by 2015, the world’s wind manufacturers are lining up to capture a piece of the action.

Not planning to be left on the sidelines, one of the world’s largest wind turbine companies, Spain’s Gamesa Corp Tecnologica SA, says it will invest 90 million euros (USD128 million) by 2012 in China, the world's largest wind power country, according to the company’s new chairman, Jose Antonio Miranda.

That figure includes investments in two new plants in Jilin province and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region this year.

Gamesa is set to launch its first offshore prototype, the 5 mw G11x model, in the US next year. Meanwhile, it is developing the larger, 6 or 7 mw G14x wind turbine, which is expected to be operational in two or three years.

The new chairman hopes the G11x will be installed in China in two years.

But the Chinese manufacturer Sinovel Wind Co Ltd has already made a 6 mw wind turbine and is looking into following through with 10 mw turbines.

Though China represents more than 20 percent of its revenue globally, Gamesa's market share has been declining since 2005, when it commanded one-third of the market.

By the end of 2010, China's overall wind power capacity amounted to 44.73gw, up 73.3 percent from the previous year. From 2006 through 2009, the growth rate of the country's installed wind-energy capacity averaged 113 percent