(Bloomberg) — MHI Vestas Offshore Wind A/S is set to
challenge Siemens AG’s dominance of the offshore wind market by
offering an 8-megawatt turbine, the largest in the world.
“We want to narrow the lead Siemens has in the market,”
said Jin Kato, Co-chief executive officer of the venture between
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Vestas Wind Systems A/S.
“It’s our goal to secure the position as one of the top two
makers and that hinges on the success of our 8-megawatt
turbine.”
Global manufacturers of clean-energy equipment are racing
to build more powerful machines as the shift toward renewable
energy gathers pace in Europe. Europe accounts for more than 90
percent of 8,800 megawatts of offshore wind capacity worldwide,
according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance data. The U.K. has
about half of the global capacity, followed by Germany and
Denmark.
MHI Vestas will focus on the European market for now, Kato
said. While Siemens has 65 percent of the offshore wind-turbine
market in Europe, MHI Vestas has 21 percent, according to a
January report by the European Wind Energy Association.
“We’re just a newcomer,” Kato said in an interview in
Tokyo last week. “Offshore wind will see real growth in Europe
as the size of turbines increase.”
Siemens introduced a 7-megawatt turbine this month, an
upgrade to its 6-megawatt turbine. The average size of offshore
wind turbines was 3.7 megawatts in 2014, according to the EWEA
report.
Commercial Production
MHI Vestas plans to supply more than 70 turbines to Danish
state-owned utility Dong Energy AS in the next two years as it
prepares for commercial production. MHI and Vestas agreed in
2013 to set up a venture to complete the 8-megawatt turbine
Vestas had been developing while Aarhus, Denmark-based Vestas
cut jobs and closed factories as prices for wind turbines
plunged.
Production of 32 turbines is expected to begin next year
for Dong Energy’s Burbo Bank Extension project in Liverpool Bay
in the U.K., Kato said. MHI Vestas was picked in February as the
preferred supplier for 40 more turbines for the first phase of
Dong’s Walney Extension Offshore Wind Farm in the Irish Sea.
Siemens was picked as the preferred supplier of 7-megawatt
turbines for the second phase of the Walney project, Dong said
on March 12. Both the first and second phases have a capacity of
330 megawatts.
MHI Vestas plans to ramp up its output of 8-megawatt
turbines to a combined 1,000 megawatts by 2019, Kato said.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Chisaki Watanabe in Tokyo at
cwatanabe5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Reed Landberg at
landberg@bloomberg.net
Indranil Ghosh, Jason Rogers