Tata Steel will invest £2 million in creating a facility to manufacture jacket foundation structures for wind turbines at its Hartlepool tube plant in the UK, a move that will step up its presence in the renewable energy market.
“Growing activity in the renewables sector will require large volumes of jacket fabrications for wind tower structures,” Tata Steel said in a statement on Monday. The facility is expected to be ready in Spring 2012.
The jackets, which fix the turbine to the seabed at its four corners, are typically used in deep water and for larger turbines. At the site components for the structures will be made at the facility and prepared for welding into the finished product. This would then be sent in kit form to fabricators in the UK and mainland Europe.
It follows the company's plans announced last August to build a £31.5-million facility at its semi-mothballed plant in Teesside to create monopiles, also used to secure wind turbines to the seabed, through one anchor point. The company estimates that as much as 6 million tonnes of steel will be needed in the UK to make the foundation and tower structures for offshore wind turbines, with up to 250 tonnes of steel used for every wind tower.
The company has also established a processing and distribution centre in Scunthorpe to handle around 200,000 tonnes of steel plate at the nearby plate mill.
The European Wind and Energy Association estimates that wind energy will triple its power output by 2020, from 5.5 per cent of total EU demand in 2020, to around 15.7 per cent of demand.