Colorado energy sector seeing mixed opportunities

Business in Colorado’s energy sector is a mixed bag in terms of activity halfway through 2010.

In the renewable sector, including wind and solar power, some companies have hired during the first six months and will continue to do so. But in the oil and gas industry, the number of drilling rigs operating in Colorado remains mired at less than half the peak number seen in August 2008.

Vestas Wind Systems A/S, which manufactures wind turbines at three Colorado plants, has hired hundreds of people for its new nacelles plant in Brighton and its towers plant in Pueblo.

Both manufacturing plants started operations during the second quarter of 2010. Vestas currently employs more than 1,200 people in Colorado, including its wind turbine blades plant in Windsor, which opened in March 2008.

Company officials say they’ll be hiring hundreds of additional workers for production lines in the next 18 months.

The company’s plants in Brighton and Pueblo are expected to increase manufacturing, a new wind-turbine blades plant is expected to open in Brighton in 2011, and Vestas also will add people both to its blades factory in Windsor and a new research-and-development facility in Louisville.

In another sector, some solar-panel system companies say they’ve been hiring — although competition for jobs on residential rooftops has been fierce.

“There are 720 residential installers in Colorado now,” said Mark Simmons, vice president for marketing and sales for Vibrant Solar Inc. in Denver. “When we went commercial, it really helped the company and helped us graduate from the inundated residential market.”

In 2008, about two-thirds of Vibrant Solar’s work was residential; in 2009, two-thirds was commercial, Simmons said.

“We now have about 64 projects on the books, of which 25 are residential,” he said.

Vibrant Solar has hired 10 people in 2010, giving it 42 employees, which matches the workforce prior to the depths of the recession in early 2009, Simmons said.

The company hopes to hire six more people by year-end, he said.

“The sales trends right now are, we have to have more installers to get things done; everyone expects their systems to be done by next year,” Simmons said. “Then in the winter it will get quiet again. But it’s a much better trend.”

Read the full story in the Denver Business Journal.