Quote:
Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280
Question: What are the major producers of wind turbines and towers in the United States? Are we winning or losing the battle to turn this into a domestic industry like airplanes or cars?
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Generators: GE (however the next 5 companies by installed capacity are all foreign: Vestas of Denmark, Siemens of Germany, Mitsubishi of Japan, Suzlon of India and Gamesa of Spain)
Towers: Trinity Industries (best known as a maker of rail cars, Mississippi River barges and highway guard rails) is a maker of large towers. There are a huge number of small firms that make towers for local and regional markets. I couldn't even begin to list them all. In the US, the towers are more likely to be locally made than what goes on them and I suspect that's true internationally as well since transporting a 300 ft tower is no small thing.
Vestas and Gamesa probably have the first mover advantage because their countries have been subsidizing wind power the longest and they got going as local businesses benefitting from the subsidy. Suzlon, as an Indian company, benefits from low costs however they have had problems recently with their blades cracking and they've had to replace a large part of their installed base. Siemens and Mitsubishi are huge companies, of course, but, like GE, seem to be slightly late to this niche.
GE does seem to be very serious about this market and will compete strongly in the US and internationally.