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Company to add 110 new jobs, produce 400 turbines annually by end of next year
by Rob Poggenklass · News · June 06, 2007
Acciona CEO and VP of manufacturing offer new details about wind turbine plant
Acciona Windpower’s new wind turbine assembly plant, which the company says will create about 110 new jobs, should be completed by November, with production to start before the end of the year. By the time the company reaches full production in late 2008, it will be producing about 400 wind turbines a year in West Branch.
In several interviews last week — including one with Peter Duprey, CEO of Acciona Energy North American Corporation, and Adrian LaTrace, Acciona’s vice president of manufacturing — the Times learned new details about the company’s $23.6 million investment in the West Branch industrial park, the kind of jobs it will create and other effects the development may have on the local economy.
Harnessing wind
First, many have wondered about the wind turbines themselves. LaTrace explained that Acciona’s 1.5 megawatt turbine is “a fairly complex device” — a far cry from your average windmill.
LaTrace said the purpose of the turbine is to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. To do so, the steel turbine uses a bedplate drive train, which LaTrace said is not unlike an engine chassis. He said that the assembled turbines come with drive control systems as well as data collection systems, allowing the company to monitor data the turbines collect remotely.
Acciona plans to build a 1.5 MW turbine on site at its West Branch assembly plant. In the future, a 3 MW turbine may be added, but that turbine is still in development. Company officials said the exact location of the on-site turbine has not yet been determined.
At least in the near future, neither will supply electricity to the assembly plant or to the larger power grid. This is due in part to zoning and permit issues, Duprey said. Still, Duprey is encouraged by the support that Alliant Energy, the local electricity provider, has given to Acciona’s new investment.
“Alliant worked with us early on,” Duprey said. “We hope we may be able to partner with them in the future.”
Acciona’s wages
The new assembly plant will create about 110 new jobs, the company says. Of these, about 104 will be production level, while the others will be administrative and management. Of the 110 new jobs, 109 of them will pay an average wage of $15.14 an hour, or about $31,500 per year.
The company has also promised to provide health, dental and life insurance benefits. A spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Economic Development said that the average benefits per Acciona employee would be $5.11, for a total of $20.25 per hour, or $42,120 annually.
On Feb. 15, IDED approved the following awards for Acciona: $2 million from the Community Economic Betterment Account, or CEBA; an additional $500,000 from CEBA; $350,000 from the Physical Infrastructure Assistance Program; and approximately $2,328,500 in tax credits from the High Quality Jobs Creation Program. The total amount is $5,178,500.
Because this money comes from the Grow Iowa Values Fund, Acciona has pledged to create jobs that will meet or exceed 130 percent of the Cedar County average. As figured by Iowa Workforce Development, the average Cedar County wage when Acciona applied for state incentives was $12.05 per hour, or about $25,250 per year, according to IDED. One hundred thirty percent of $12.14 is $15.67 — more than four and a half dollars less than the $20.25 figure to which Acciona has committed.
(According to IDED, one of the Acciona jobs does not qualify for the state incentives.)
Job training
Adrian LaTrace said that because the assembly process is technical in nature, the jobs will require at least a high school education. Cara Conrad, who works for IDED, said that Acciona employees will be trained to do a number of different tasks and will work in teams so that if one worker is gone, production can still continue.
Kirkwood Community College will assist Acciona with job training. Dee Baird, Kirkwood’s vice president for continuing education, said in an interview last Friday that Acciona has filed an application for a preliminary agreement with the school, a legal document that will be considered by Kirkwood’s board of trustees in July.
For now, Kirkwood is aware of two jobs, both management, that Acciona is hiring for — a plant manager and a human capital manager (similar to human resources). One of Kirkwood’s roles will be to post these jobs on the career services portion of its web site, as well as alert area partners in a seven-county area, Baird said. Iowa Workforce Development will also post new Acciona jobs as they become available.
If the deal with Acciona is approved by the trustees, Kirkwood will also assist in job training curriculum.
“The company decides on the training,” Baird said. “Kirkwood will help with the curriculum; Acciona will drive it.”
Baird plans to meet with Acciona officials at their Chicago office on June 20. She said she would know more details about the company’s hiring timeline then.
Sustaining a business
In addition to finding new employees, Acciona has already begun its search for suppliers to provide parts for the 1.5 MW wind turbines. Duprey said that initially, the company will use a hybrid supply chain, with some of the parts coming from existing suppliers in Europe. In the future, that may change.
“It is our desire to source as many companies from this region as we can,” Duprey said. “The industry’s growing. We need a pool of resources.”
Duprey said several people had inquired about purchasing stock in Acciona. This is not possible, he said, because the company is not traded in the United States.
While this is Acciona’s first wind turbine assembly plant in North America, the company is not new to renewable energy, or to the United States. In September, Acciona will dedicate a solar thermal plant in the Nevada desert, which will produce about 64 MW of power. Duprey said the Spanish company, which is more than 100 years old, has also invested in solar farms, biodiesel, ethanol, water purification and biomass — all in addition to being the largest producer of wind energy in the world.
“Acciona’s pretty diverse,” Duprey said. “We really view ourselves as a sustainable business.”
New neighbors
Several times in the past, tall structures south of the interstate have raised concerns for the National Park Service, which aims to protect the view from President Herbert Hoover’s Gravesite. Before the city’s water tower was erected, for example, the NPS conducted a viewshed study to see if the tower would significantly impact the park vista. When McDonald’s came to West Branch about 10 years ago, there was no change made to the height of its sign.
Superintendent Cheryl Schreier said that the park currently has no plan to conduct a viewshed study, and that she is more focused on protecting the views from the Gravesite to the Birthplace Cottage, and vice versa.
Schreier said that Herbert Hoover National Historic Site has other priorities at the moment: the stream, water quality, accessibility, lead abatements and the structural integrity of historic buildings, to name a few.
Before Acciona can begin production at its new facility, which will be just over 200,000 square feet when finished, some products belonging to its closest neighbor — Procter & Gamble — must be removed. P&G, whose distribution center is across the street from Acciona’s building, had leased the old Sauer-Danfoss building during the construction of its own expansion project.
Darren Miller, the new Iowa City distribution manager for P&G, said the company expects to have all its products out of Acciona’s building by June 30. Furthermore, he said that while congestion may pose a challenge on Fawcett Drive (formerly Sauer Blvd./300th St.), P&G looks forward to having Acciona across the street.
“I think they’ll be good neighbors,” Miller said at the ground-breaking ceremony last week. “It’s all positive.”
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