Danish wind turbine producer Vestas has secured its first European order for its latest V112 3-MW model. The company will provide 17 of the turbines to German company Prokon.

The contract includes installation, spare parts and a range of monitoring and control functions to help the planned Krackow project in Germany’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern generate the highest energy production with maximum return on investment, said Vestas in a statement.

The delivery of the turbines is scheduled to begin some time between late-2011 and early 2012, it added.

Prokon, one of Germany’s largest wind energy operators, currently has over 385 MW of installed wind capacity and has been active in the sector for more than 15 years.

“Vestas is delighted that Prokon is demonstrating its trust in Vestas by ordering the V112-3.0 MW turbine,” said Vestas Central Europe president Hans Jörn Rieks in a statement. “The V112-3.0 MW meets Prokon’s specific needs for this project, and will deliver a very high level of energy production with a low cost of energy,” he added.

Prokon managing partner Carsten Rodbertus said his company currently had 29 Vestas turbines “running reliably” across its 32 wind farms, accounting for about 12% of its total installed machinery.

“For the Krackow site, with its 7.1 meters/second wind speeds, the V112-3.0 MW is the right choice because it can optimise the wind conditions.”

Vestas V112 External Blade Investigation Results Imminent

Late last week Vestas said that the external investigation into a blade detachment from a prototype model of the V112 turbine in Lem, Denmark was expected to be concluded with two weeks.

The investigation is being carried out by Danish risk management firm Det Norske Veritas and will follow up on from the company’s own investigation, which concluded that human error in the manufacturing process was to blame for the blade failure.

Speaking Thursday a company spokesman said he fully expected the independent findings to come to the same conclusions as the company’s own investigation and vowed to share the outcome with its customers.

Macarthur Wind Developers in "Ongoing Dialogue"

Vestas, said the spokesman, had been in “constant dialogue” with the developers of the 400 MW Macarthur Wind Farm in Australia, which is set to be the largest in the country and will be equipped with V112 turbines after they go into mass production in the second quarter of next year.

On Macarthur, he said: “We are of course working with the developers, it is a partnership. The delivery [of the turbines] will not happen until the middle of next year and we will have plenty of time if any adjustments [to the system] need to be taken into consideration.”

The spokesman emphasised the fact the detached blade was a manually produced prototype model and that as such they would always have a higher risk of failure than those created in an automatic production process.

Separately, he said that the second prototype V112 turbine is set to erected in Cantabria in Spain this week.