Vestas plans to hire hundreds for three Colorado plants

Vestas Wind System A/S said Tuesday its three Colorado wind turbine factories are officially up and running, and the company has hired more than 1,000 people, with hundreds more expected to be hired in the next 12 to 18 months.

The three factories — in Brighton, Windsor and Pueblo — plus a fourth one under construction in Brighton represent an investment of nearly $1 billion in Colorado since 2007.

Vestas (Copenhagen: VWS.CO) is based in Denmark; its U.S. headquarters is in Portland, Ore.

“We have now hired more than 1,000 highly skilled workers [in Colorado] and seek a number of more workers,” said Torben Poulsen, vice president and factory manager for Vestas’ nacelles and hub factory in Brighton, the company’s largest such factory in the world. “We’re committed to building local economies wherever our factories are open.”

The Brighton nacelles factory finished its first nacelle on April 15; it officially opened July 7. A nacelle is the 72-ton housing unit at the top of a wind turbine tower that holds equipment needed to convert wind energy to electricity.

The Brighton nacelles factory currently is working to fill an order for 139 of its V90-1.8 megawatt turbines for the Cedar Point wind farm in eastern Colorado. The 250-megawatt wind farm is being built by Renewable Energy Systems Americas Inc. (RES Americas) — the Broomfield-based U.S. unit of Britain’s Renewable Energy Systems Ltd. — and Canadian energy company Enbridge Inc.

The power generated by the wind farm, expected to be operational in late 2011, will be bought by Xcel Energy Inc.

Read the full story in the Denver Business Journal.