Fast-growing wind power industry gives economic boost to eastern Iowa, with area grads landing jobs
In the past three years traffic patterns and activity levels have noticeably changed on Bowling Street Southwest in Cedar Rapids. A once-silenced manufacturing plant is now humming constantly, rushing to meet the needs for electrical power in the U.S. and points around the globe. Just as quickly, company leaders are looking to area workers to build skills and meet the rapidly rising demand for employees at the plant.
In an expansive former printing press plant that sat dormant and dark for several years, Clipper Windpower now assembles its “Liberty” model turbine, the largest such turbine built in the U.S.. Anyone drawing a growth curve of the company’s Iowa operations would mark a steep rise over short time lines. That is true in production and employee numbers alike. From a core launch team of about 30 people late in 2005 the company now employs about 360 workers, with that number growing to meet the continued strong market demand.
The burst of activity at the Clipper Cedar Rapids facility is a reflection of strong demand for many alternative sources of energy, according to Manager of Manufacturing Engineering Marty Stimson. He describes a “strong, high-demand” market with no let-up in sight.
“We started getting this plant ready in 2005 and produced our first turbines by late 2006. In 2007 we produced 140 and in 2008 we expect to exceed 300 turbines built, close to one a day. Next year we plan to build 400 wind turbines.
To understand what it means to assemble 300 to 400 turbines annually, you have to understand the size of these machines,” Stimson added. “At our Cedar Rapids plant we assemble the turbine’s nacelle components. The nacelle includes the main gear and electronic parts of the machine. Once it is transported to the construction site, it is lifted to the top of the tower where the turbine’s three rotor blades are bolted on.”
One nacelle measures about 22 feet by 17 feet and weighs close to 100 tons. Stimson notes that one Liberty wind turbine produces 2.5 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 800 average Americn homes.
That level of production happens in a gargantuan production and assembly facility that sat dormant for several years after the Rockwell Goss manufacturing plant closed in the late 1990s. On a warm summer day in 2008, it’s a noisy but coordinated hub of activity. Stimson says they average “10 to 20 trucks a day” moving in and out as the plant workers assemble a turbine a day.
“We have parts and assemblies coming in from all over the U.S., from all over the world, for that matter. When we ship a nacelle from our shop here in Cedar Rapids to a project construction side, other major parts including the tower and blade assemblies are shipped directly to that site from Clipper suppliers who are manufacturing those components to Clipper design specifications. But here in our plant, there are probably in excess of 80,000 individual parts that come together to make the internal workings of one turbine,” Stimson said.
Parts for the turbines roll into the plant from as near as Illinois and Wisconsin to distant points like Poland and Brazil. In addition to the nacelle components built in Iowa, other major assemblies like the 140-foot-plus wind turbine blades and the 260-foot tower go directly to the installation site, whether in western Iowa or Texas or New York.
The California-based company looks to its three-year-old Cedar Rapids plant for key assembly and testing of the Liberty nacelle components, including drive train and generator workings.
“The quality and reliability of these wind turbines is essential since it impacts the cost of the electricity they generate,” said Stimson. “We test every drive train to assure that it will attain a 20-year life before we ship to a project site.”
As with many modern advanced manufacturing plants, Clipper builds objects on a supersize scale, but with incredible precision. The largesse of the plant is obvious as a visitor steps onto the assembly floor. There are 330,000 square feet under roof on Bowling Street, with ceilings 60 feet or more above the floor. About six complete football fields would fit flat inside the Clipper walls.
The turbines combine housings weighing tons and precision gears with electrical wires thinner than angel hair pasta. Stimson uses an engineering marvel of a past century to describe his products for a new age.
“When we complete a wind turbine generator, it weighs more than 50 tons. But the critical assemblies fit together with tolerances within five thousands of an inch—even ten thousandths. That is really precise. So I tell people that here at Clipper, we basically make a 100,000 pound Swiss watch.”
The winds of economic change and rising energy demands have converged in boosting demand for Clipper turbine products. Not long after they announced their facility launch in Cedar Rapids, Spanish-based Acciona announced it would build another wind turbine plant in West Branch, Iowa about 30 miles to the southeast of the Clipper plant. Other wind energy part supply sources are now in Newton, Burlington and other Iowa locations.
Midwest-based wind power interest is no accident, according to Stimson. He notes a “wind power corridor” that stretches through the middle of America.
“The promising wind capability would start in Iowa up in the northern, northwest corner. Then you go into southern Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas—all the way over to the start of the Rockies. Then down into Texas, New Mexico too. It’s a lot of territory. But there are a lot of turbines in use, producing already. If you go up to northwest Iowa there are already several hundreds of turbines producing and more going up,” he said.
The rapidly growing demand for Clipper’s generating turbines has created ongoing demands and challenges in filling jobs and keeping up with the market. Stimson looks to Kirkwood Community College for many potential new employees in the coming years. He cites the main campus Industrial Technologies departments just two miles south of the plant as being key sources for the next generation of workers. Stimson notes “several students we have hired already, right after graduation” and expects that to continue and grow.
“We have places here for electrical engineers, industrial maintenance program grads. Another area we have a need for is painting experts. We actually have hired people out of Kirkwood’s Auto Body and Collision program to do our product painting. Yeah, what we do is bigger and a little different, but it’s still paint processes. They do well here,” Stimson observed.
One of the newer employees at Clipper is Tyler Glass. The Cedar Rapids native graduated from Kirkwood in May with a CAD/Mechanical Engineering Technology degree. Glass took a tour of the Clipper facilities last year and “thought it would be amazing” to work there.
“My main duties are 3-D modeling and drawing updates for the Liberty turbines,” Glass said. “I get a lot of satisfaction knowing I am helping the world become a better, cleaner place. The potential of wind energy in America and around the world is immense. I’m proud to be part of that.”
Kirkwood Industrial Technologies Dean Phil Thomas sees blue-sky opportunities for his students and the “new energy” market alike in the present and future.
“There is a lot to be excited about with Clipper’s great progress in Cedar Rapids and with several other industries in Iowa. Precision manufacturing and advanced manufacturing skill sets are in demand far beyond what many think. This is a message we try to get out to people all the time—all the time! For Clipper, for biotechnology companies like Genencor, for advanced electronics companies like Rockwell and Siemens—it goes on and on with openings to make a great career right here in Iowa. This is an amazing time to be involved in teaching and encouraging this new generation of manufacturing professionals,” Thomas said.
As he steps off the manufacturing floor of Clipper Windpower, Marty Stimson ponders his own learning curve in Cedar Rapids manufacturing.
“I’m a Kirkwood grad myself. I got a mechanical engineering technology degree back in 1975. It was what you might call the ‘slide rule engineering’ era back then. So I’ve been working in Cedar Rapids for more than three decades. I’ve had the pleasure of hiring talented young people like Tyler Glass just recently with their mechanical engineering and CAD skills from Kirkwood. We see lots of opportunities coming up for people with this training and education to get a good start with our company,” Stimson said.
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More information on Kirkwood Industrial Technologies programs and Clipper Windpower are available online: