Andrea Hein

"Enron Wind is a financially strong company in regard to profits and balance sheet," Andrea Hein, director of marketing and communications at Enron Wind in Germany, told Reuters by telephone.

Enron Wind has been up for sale for the past year and the current situation for Enron Corp could speed up a sale.

The Enron turbines for the Irish offshore project will be 3.6 megawatts each.At present the biggest turbines on the market are 2.5 megawatts.

Hein said Enron Wind doubled its wind turbine manufacturing capacity in Germany last month with 32 million marks investment.

She declined to elaborate on Enron Wind's sales and profits, but said the company would install around 750 megawatts this year."We are back on track for a place among the top five wind turbine makers," Hein said.

Enron Wind's market share fell to six percent of installed megawatts last year from 9.2 percent in 1999 and the company now ranks as the seventh biggest turbine maker in the world.

"The outlook for next year is strong and we expect a good year as in 2001," Hein said.

"We'll start the initial batch this year and the first machines are to go up offshore in spring next year," says Enron spokeswoman, Andrea Hein.

The multi-megawatt machines are modelled on the 1.5-MW plant of which more than 850 have been installed world wide.A number of technical innovations have gone into the giant wind wheels.One is an integrated crane system enabling transportation and assembly of large components like blades, gearboxes and generator without the need for an external heavy-duty crane, or, in the offshore version, a platform enabling helicopter access to the plant.

Salzbergen Administrative Director Karl-Heinz Mäteling lauded the many years the community in southern Lower Saxony (180 km west of Hanover) and Enron Wind have been closely linked and said he was certain the good relations would continue after the takeover of Enron's wind energy activities by the US company, General Electric.