WCA November 2010

From the americas

Statue of Liberty Image from BigStockPhoto.com Photographer: Marty

Elsewhere in renewable energy . . .

Steel

Another project for making blades for wind turbines, this one Canadian, is headed up by Siemens Canada which expects to commission a plant for the purpose by late 2011, in time for the 2012 construction season. Together with its American partner Pattern Energy, Siemens will supply the blades for a massive wind and solar power development in the province of Ontario led by Samsung C&T Corp, of South Korea. As reported by John Spears in the Toronto Star (10 th August), in return for $437 million in subsidies over 25 years, Samsung and Korea Electric Power Co signed an agreement with Ontario that requires them to build a total of four plants there to make equipment for the generation of wind and solar energy. The big blades are intended for turbines that can generate 2.3 megawatts of power. The wind farms where they will be installed will qualify for the province’s “feed-in tariff” rates, paying on-shore wind farms 13.5 cents a kilowatt hour for power. (When Mr Spears wrote, market prices had averaged about 4c/kWh since 1 st January, although high summertime demand pushed rates briefly into the 12-cent range.) As with the Chinese-US project in Texas, the sourcing of steel was apparently a factor in the Canadian negotiations. Siemens senior vice president Bill Smith told the Star that the steel towers that support the blades will be made in Ontario. While Samsung will be the key customer at first, taking 300 or more blades, the South Korean company will not have an exclusive on output. The new plant, Mr Smith said, “would supply blades or turbines to whoever wanted to install them.” A Senate hopeful from a Rust Belt state takes a contrarian view of US tariffs on Chinese steel imports The United Steelworkers of America also figured in coverage of a special election being run in West Virginia to fill the two years of the late Senator Robert C Byrd’s unexpired term. Mr Byrd, a Democrat, was one of the Senate’s strongest supporters of tariffs on steel imports from China. Hoping to succeed him is John Raese, a Republican, who has said he believes tariffs placed on steel imports during the George W Bush administration have played a major role in creating economic problems in the United States. It was Sen Byrd’s conviction that the output of American steel makers could not compete with imports from countries with low wages, weak environmental regulations, and government subsidies for steel mills. Mr Raese urges concern for American manufacturers of steel products. In a telephone interview with the Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette-Mail , he said, “When you have a tariff on all imported steel, that allows domestic steel companies to raise their costs to just below that tariff figure. Then we all have to raise our prices.” These views on steel tariffs, expressed at a midsummer civic meeting in Wheeling, West Virginia, drew the ire of the president of the United Steelworkers local. Calling Mr Raese’s comments “outrageous,” Mark Glyptis said that

Chinese participation in a wind power project in Texas has the blessing of the United Steelworkers of America An agreement between the United Steelworkers of America and two Chinese clean energy companies apparently has deflected potential controversy over the use of economic stimulus money from Washington to subsidise foreign companies. The deal, announced 6 th August, requires that all major components of the machinery for a $1.5 billion wind farm in Texas be made in the United States. The elements to be sourced domestically include steel for the wind towers, enclosures for working parts atop the towers, and reinforcing bars for the bases. So also will the blades be American-made, the union and the Chinese companies said. Blades, or vanes, for wind turbines are not fabricated of steel but are often made by steel workers. The Chinese parties to the agreement with the labour union are Shenyang Power Group, known as SPG, and that company’s partly-owned subsidiary A-Power Energy Generation Systems. They have formed a joint venture with the American investment firm US Renewable Energy Group to build the wind farm in West Texas. When, in the fall of 2009, word spread that millions of dollars in federal stimulus grants and loan guarantees for clean energy initiatives might flow to the project, members of Congress requested the Obama administration to deny federal aid. “Their chief worry was that the turbines would be manufactured in Shenyang, China, rather than in the United States,” wrote Matthew L Wald, a Washington reporter for the New York Times . “[This] announcement seems likely to allay some of those objections.” (“Wind Farm Deal Assures Bigger US Role.” 6 th August) President Leo W Gerard of the United Steelworkers said his union had been prepared to bring anti-dumping actions against Chinese manufacturers of steel imported for wind machines, as it has in the past over steel imports for other uses. Now, the Chinese participants in the 615-megawatt Texas project anticipate buying 50,000 tons of steel from unionised American mills. They will also work to develop an American supply chain for wind machine manufacture beyond the Texas project, the union said. The ❖ ❖ Times ’s Mr Wald called attention to the expanding globalisation of the wind machine industry, which utilises parts made in various countries. Robert E Gramlich, policy director at the American Wind Energy Assn, told him that the “big heavy stuff” – ie towers and blades – were generally most likely to be locally sourced; and that smaller, higher-value components were more likely to be imported. In the case of the Texas project, however, the gear box, a high-value component, was always to be manufactured by General Electric Co (Fairfield, Connecticut).

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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2010