Wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa has broken ground on a new wind turbine manufacturing plant in the city of Da'an in Jilin province, China.
The factory, scheduled to begin operation in 2011, will manufacture G8X-2.0MW wind turbines and have a production capacity of 500MW per year. It is the company’s fifth wind turbine manufacturing plant in China.
The company has installed a total of 2,000 of its Gamesa G5X-850kW turbines in China in over 60 locations. It began industrial production of the Gamesa G8X-2.0MW model in 2010, adding a total of 400MW of new capacity to bring its total manufacturing capacity in China to 1,000MW per year. With the new Jilin factory, Gamesa’s manufacturing capacity in China will rise to 1,500MW in one year.
Jorge Calvet, chairman of Gamesa, said: “Gamesa is one of the main investors in the wind power industry in China. The groundbreaking on our new facility strengthens Gamesa global position and it represents a great opportunity to keep involving in the China wind industry expansion and serving our clients in the province that the government has targeted to have the highest wind power capacity in all of China.”
Gamesa has a pipeline of wind farm projects totaling 2,400MW at varying stages of development in China. In the past year, the company has been involved in the wind industry expansion encouraged by the Chinese government and its main customers, signing agreements with local companies to jointly develop wind farms with total capacity of more than 700MW in the Chinese provinces, the company said.
Gamesa and its partner, China Guangdong Nuclear Wind, in early 2010 brought their first wind farm (49.3MW) on stream at Taipingshan in Shandong province.