America's General Electric is opening its first plant in Vietnam this year, to make turbine components.
But there is "significant unexploited production capacity", Vestas says, due to shortages of high-quality turbine components.
South Africa's Harrison and White Investments and its Chinese technology partner, Ming Yang Wind Power, will build wind turbine components factories in South Africa and Lesotho.
The knock-on effects of offshore wind, beyond building and assembling turbine components, are key to the long-term prospects for the industry.
Advent and Carlyle plan to sell shares in Starck, which makes materials like metal powders used to coat turbine components in jet engines, in three to five years.
Their services range from forecasting wind conditions at potential wind farm sites to certifying that turbine components like gearboxes or blades are sound.
The machines, built by Sinovel, a Chinese company, are the "largest wind turbines that are being domestically produced in China," said Jason Fredette, director of corporate communications for American Superconductor, a company that makes turbine components.
TRIUMPH GROUP, Wayne, Pa., a maker and servicer of aircraft parts and industrial gas turbine components, said it had acquired Furst Aircraft and Instrument, Teterboro, N.J., and Aerocell Structures Inc., Hot Springs, Ark .Terms were not disclosed.
Already, though, much of the manufacturing for American wind energy is done offshore, with the big European developers importing some of the most sophisticated and valuable turbine components from factories overseas.
A number of newer NDE technologies including holography, pulsed thermometry, shearography, and neutron radiation are used routinely by manufacturers, especially for such critical elements as turbine components and composites, but they have as yet only limited applications in maintenance.
In 1999 the company became a global leader in marine power systems on its acquisition of Vickers PLC, a maker of maritime propulsion and stabilization systems, turbine components, and defense systems.
