As wind farms spring up inland and offshore and turbines get larger, so demands are increasing on windmill blade manufacturers. This will be discussed at the new AMI global conference on Wind Turbine Blade Manufacture, which takes place 7-9 December 2010 in Düsseldorf. The event starts with a review by LM Wind Power of blade requirements for increasing energy output. Win Wind Power Energy is a leading manufacturer in India and will outline the set up of new plant.

The global economic downturn has placed pressures on the industry to keep costs down and provide higher performance blades in terms of weatherability and durability. There have been well-documented cases of failure and these are being studied so that expensive shut downs can be reduced or, ideally, avoided. Vestas Wind Systems has the mission statement that “Failure is not an option” and is moving to Six Sigma targets of 3.4 defects per million opportunities by 2015. In North America, Clipper Windpower has in turn developed robust manufacturing of MW blades.