14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, multinational engineering and electronics company Siemens announced that it had sold 448 onshore wind turbines to MidAmerican Energy.
The 448 turbines have a combined energy generating capacity of 1,050 megawatts, and will be installed at five different sites across Iowa.
Presently, Iowa is said to be one of the leading US states in terms of wind energy generation. More precisely, recent reports say that, in the year 2012, some 24% of Iowa's electricity output came from harvesting said green energy source.
The 448 wind turbines will be up and running by 2015 and, once this happens, the state will further increase its green energy production capacity.
Thus, Siemens estimates that the clean electricity produced by these turbines will be more than enough to meet the power demands of as many as 320,000 American households.
In a press release on the matter at hand, Siemens details that each of the wind turbines purchased by MidAmerican Energy has an output of 2.3 megawatts.
Their nacelles and hubs are to be assembled at a plant that Siemens operates in Hutchinson, Kansas, whereas the rotor blades will be pieced together in Ford Madison, Iowa.
Apart from building the wind turbines, Siemens will be in charge of servicing them for a few years.
According to Siemens, MidAmerican Energy's order for 448 wind turbines is the largest to have ever been announced in the world.
“With a total capacity of 1,050 megawatts (MW), this represents not only the largest order for onshore wind turbines for Siemens, but also the largest single order for onshore wind power awarded globally to date,” the company writes on its website.
For those unaware, this is not the first time when Siemens and MidAmerican Energy work together to promote the use of renewables. On the contrary, the engineering and electronics giant has thus far installed another 1.2 gigawatts of wind power capacity for the energy company.
“Siemens not only leads the way for offshore wind power worldwide, we are also a very successful player in the onshore wind industry. In Europe and Africa alone, we successfully installed more than 1 gigawatt in the last fiscal year.”
“This new order from MidAmerican Energy once again highlights that we are one of the leading suppliers in the U.S. wind power market,” Markus Tacke, CEO of the wind power division of Siemens Energy, commented on this latest collaboration between the two companies.