Readers of this blog may well be aware of my scepticism towards European wind turbine manufacturers succeeding outside of the cossetted European market.

So that's why it's fascinating to read that Vestas, the Danish world no. 1 turbine manufacturer is to invest 500 m singaporean dollars (that's about $315 m USD) over 10 years in an R&D; centre in the world's most successful (albeit not democratic) city state, Singapore.

I think the story here is that they are not looking to get into the Singaporean market. Singapore sees itself as Asia's R&D; capital. It is the massive potential of China and India that they can only tap into with a local presence.

I expect more European firms will reach these conclusions very soon. Right now, there are too many wind firms chasing not enough contracts on the old continent.

Asia is the most promising market of them all.

Clipper Windpower, the American wind company listed on London's AIM, a vertically integrated manufacturer to wind farm operator, has just posted a pretax loss of 11.1 mln usd for the first half of 2006, up from a loss of 7.2 mln the prior year.

There's more to this story though; sales are increasing at a much faster rate. The company also reported for the six months ended June 30 2006 sales of $7.1 m against $2.5m for the six months to end-June 2005.

So when will they make a profit?

Rising sales on less slowly rising losses, it reminds me of Amazon . . .

Suzlon Energy, India's champion of the wind industry, has just announced plans to invest Rs 15 billion (that's $326 million) into expanding manufacturing capacity.

I used to think that for manufacturers of large wind turbines for export over any great distance would be next to impossible. They are simply too huge and cumbersome. That was and is certainly true of German manufacturers. But Suzlon by manufacturing in India is turning this idea on its head. They are selling into the USA from India - very impressive. Just yesterday, the company also got a Rs 11.9 billion ($258m) order from US-based John Deere Wind Energy to supply 247 MW of wind turbine capacity. That's actually a good price for John Deere - wind turbine capacity has risen substantially from a few years ago from $1m per megawatt to $1.2 - $1.3. The rise has been due to the increase in raw materials like steel that go into the turbine towers.