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Siemens AG (NYSE: SI [5]), the largest company in the EnergyBoom Clean 100 Index (E•B Clean 100) [6] and the world’s leading provider of offshore wind turbines, says the largest onshore turbine order in its history for three wind farms in Iowa will be filled from turbines produced at its two new U.S. factories.

The company announced Tuesday that the order for 258 2.3 megawatt (MW) turbines will be installed at wind farms owned by MidAmerican Energy Company and produced at Siemens’ facilities at Hutchinson, Kansas, and Fort Madison, Iowa. The companies did not disclose the price of the turbines.

Delivery and commissioning of the turbines is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2011 and be completed by early 2012. 

The total 593 megawatts will power about 190,000 homes and will be installed in Cass, Adams, Marshall, Calhoun and Adair counties, according to MidAmerican, based in Des Moines. MidAmerican says its 1,393 MW of wind power makes it the largest rate-regulated utility wind-power generator in the U.S.

Siemens’ 300,000-square-foot Hutchinson plant was opened this month to make turbine nacelles (covers that house the turbine generator and other components). The Fort Madison turbine blade factory was first opened in 2007 and has since been expanded to 600,000square feet. 

The company’s U.S. wind power operations include a Houston-based wind turbine service operation, an R&D center in Boulder, Colorado, two gearbox factories in Elgin, Illinois, and the company's Americas headquarters in Orlando, Fla. 

In the U.S., Siemens employs close to 1,500 people in the wind business and has installed wind turbines with a combined capacity of more than 3,600 megawatts, which is enough to supply power to more than one million average homes.

Altogether, German-based Siemens has 70,000 U.S. employees and says it provides power systems that generate more than one-third of the electricity used in the U.S. In addition to its wind power production facilities, Siemens broke ground in October of this year on a new 400,000-square-foot, 60-Hz gas turbine production plant adjacent to its existing steam turbine-generator manufacturing plant in Charlotte, N.C.  

Photo credit: Iowa Wind Center

DISCLOSURE: The writer has no positions in, or professional connections with, these companies.