By Joe Salimando www.eleblog.com
Your humble reporter journeyed to Dallas May 23-26 for WindPower 2010. This was an ELECTRICAL show, in more ways than one.
NECA contractors with booths on the huge show floor were: Aldridge of Illinois, O’Connell of upstate NY, MYR Group (home to a lot of NECA-member companies), Quanta Services (ditto), and Rosendin of California.
Electrical distributors with booths included (I hope I didn’t miss any): Border States Electric, City Build Utility Supply, Elliott Electrical Supply (of east Texas), Gexpro (formerly GE Supply, now a unit of Rexel), Graybar, Hagemeyer (a unit of Sonepar), Stuart C. Irby (also a unit of Sonepar) and Wesco.
Grainger also had a booth.
NECA-IBEW was represented on the show floor.
There were also a bunch of non-union electrical contractors with booths on the show floor. Names you might know include Pike and IES, but there were other (smaller) contractors, too.
In addition, many booths displayed wares from electrical manufacturers whose names you know. I spent time in the Thomas & Betts booth, for example. I wandered by the Erico booth numerous times.
GE Energy, Siemens, ABB, and other big-name wind-energy companies were on hand. Included in there are the foreign companies – Iberdrola, Acciona, and so forth.
Bring Sneakers In 2011
Woody Allen (supposedly) said that 90% of life is just showing up. Or maybe it was Yogi? The big wind event will be held in Anaheim next May. My advice is: (1) Show up and learn. (2) Forget dress shoes, bring sneakers.
The show floor was enormous (someone told me there were 1,428 exhibitors, and many of the booths were huge). The show took up six halls of the Dallas Convention Center (booths 101 to 12000), not including what was outside, and 2000 booth numbers on another floor.
My feet hurt just thinking about my three days at this event. Yes, this might have as much to do with my physical condition (65 pounds overweight) as with the square miles covered by the show floor.
I thought it was important to show up. I went to this event to LEARN. It’s impossible to keep up with what’s happening in a market that has suddenly emerged (or so it seems) as a significant part of the electrical industry without listening and asking questions.
A Sketch Of Key Info
What did I learn? I’ll fill several Special Report blogs on www.tedmag.com with information from my notebooks (3 of them). Here’s a sketch:
1. The wind industry had its best year ever in 2009. That won’t be matched by 2010 and maybe 2011 and 2012, too. What’s happening? As the price of natural gas fell off of a cliff (and stayed down, due to unanticipated extra supply from shale gas), the price at which wind farms could sell their power plunged below the price at which they’ll break even.
So where there were 10 gW of wind power generation put in place in 2009, the first 90 days of 2010 saw the installation of fewer than 600 mW!
2. This is why the American Wind Energy Association (show sponsor – see www.awea.org) is so big on getting legislative help from Congress. The idea is to require renewables as part of every utility’s portfolio, in every state, so that wind is mandated. I don’t know what you think of that, but – from the speaker list and what I heard at the opening day’s plenary session – this political thing is an AWEA priority.
3. There’s a lot of electrical stuff in a typical wind installation. I heard one speaker say (in answer to a question) that 30% of a typical project was electrical, but I walked into that session late (from another session) – and so it’s not quite in context. But you wouldn’t have to have heard this to know that electrical is a big part of wind . . . just a walk through the show floor (albeit, a painful one in dress shoes!) would tell you that.
4. There were deals being made at this show, important conversations between consultants, vendors, contractors, and customers. The key thing here: There is a 30% (of project cost) benefit from the U.S. government that can be claimed – if your project is substantially underway by 12/31/10. With that kind of free money at stake, getting things in motion in the months after May 26 would seem pretty important!
5. There are three wind categories:
Small: under 100 kW.
Mid-sized: 101 to 1,000 kW (which, of course, is 1 mW).
Large: Over 1 mW.
Large projects (like those in which GE Energy gets involved) are “developed.” It’s hard to envision a contractor getting involved in this “cold” (i.e., with no experience).
Mid-sized wind seems interesting. From what little I heard about it, there is a shortage of suppliers of this size of wind installation. That’s not definitive, just what I heard.
Small wind is more expensive. It can run 12 cents to 25 cents per kW, which is not economic. But people do want wind power in their backyards (including farmers –
there was at least one speaker from the USDA here).
6. Yogi said you can see a lot just by looking. At this show, you could also hear a lot just by listening. I heard someone say that a friend was a rock-ribbed conservative farmer – but that the man had become a huge advocate of wind energy, because the wind farm on his property was making more money than the farming operation.
BOTTOM LINE: I couldn’t be everywhere and see everything at this event (not even close!) – so these data support no conclusions. However, I am certain of this: Had you gone to the same event as I attended, you might have heard different stuff, seen other interesting product and services on display, asked better questions, and learned more (or at least something other) than I did.