Vestas’ new design centre in Chennai to scope out global wind mill sites

Danish wind turbine company Vestas will soon have nearly 50 engineers in a new design centre in Chennai (first of its kind for Vestas globally) to help the company identify the right project sites globally to install wind mills.

Engineers will remotely perform various statistical analyses using wind patterns from a device installed at the site to know whether a site is suitable for installation of wind turbines or not. At present, engineers physically select the sites, said Morten Rasmussen, Vice-President, People & Culture ASP, Vestas.

“We are creating a global wind and siting (location) team out of Chennai. This is going to be a core team to monitor wind speed to create most optimal product and solution to develop a power plant at a particular site. Engineers will monitor the site and study various data. This is to be a done on a global level from here,” he told BusinessLine . The team should be in place by year-end.

Wind, site evaluation

Before installing a turbine, a met mast is installed to collect wind data and analysis is done for a long period of time to see how the wind is moving. This analysis will be critical to decide the location. Along with engineers, a number of data analysts will be involved in the new design centre in Chennai, he said.

Wind and site evaluation is a critical step in wind power plant sales process. As a wind and site engineer, the person will play a key role in identifying and quantifying technical risks of wind power projects, and generating and capturing value through innovative customised technical solutions. The engineer will focus on value adding high quality statistical analysis and project layout design, load assessments, and associated customer support, he said.

For Vestas, nearly 10 per cent of its 23,000 strong global workforce is in India.

Chennai is critical for Vestas due to presence of the company’s largest R&D facility outside its headquarters in Denmark, and one at Portugal. Chennai also has the company’s ‘nacelle’ — that houses all of the generating components in a wind turbine, including the generator, gearbox, drive train, and brake assembly — manufacturing unit, an R&D test centre, global operations and shared services and a large training centre with digital simulators to train technicians, he said.

Vestas, which is present in India since 1997, has two entities — Vestas Wind and Vistas Technology. It has over 400 customers in India and has an installed base of 2204 MW.

Vestas has a manufacturing facility for wind turbine ‘hub’ at Oragadam; for blades in Ahmedabad and a repair centre in Coimbatore, he said.

In the next 24 months, “We plan to add 50 per cent more employees to reach a total employee strength of nearly 3,500. We aim to be a true talent magnet to deliver new and future elements in wind energy and in alternative energy markets. We are looking at combining hybrids [wind, solar and storage]. To do this, we are looking at adding the right level of talentin India,” he said.

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