LOUISVILLE - Denmark-based Vestas Wind Systems A/S is setting up a research and development office in Louisville.

The wind-turbine blade manufacturer signed a six-year lease for 48,000 square feet of space at 361 Centennial Parkway where its Technology R&D Centre will employ about 75 to 100 workers in the first year with an average annual salary of $80,000. The number of workers could grow to 240 in three years.

Chris Boston and Lynda Gibbons of Gibbons-White Inc. brokered the lease with Kitty Hook, senior vice president of Fuller Real Estate, who represented Vestas.

This center, according to a job-listing site, will be Vestas Wind Systems' largest research and development center in the U.S. It opened a research and development hub in Houston in 2008. It also has research and development centers in Denmark, India, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

Vestas Blades Americas, a subsidiary of Vestas Wind Systems A/S, recently opened three manufacturing facilities in Colorado to provide wind turbines for North American customers: a blades factory in Windsor, a nacelles-assembly factory in Brighton and a tower-manufacturing facility in Pueblo. A second blade factory is planned for 2011 in Brighton.

Vestas will take part of the second floor and the entire third floor at 361 Centennial. The two floors previously were occupied by Plexus Corp. Vestas has begun construction to remodel part of the space.

Vestas moved its U.S. headquarters to Portland in 2002 from Palm Springs, Calif.

as Wind Systems recently announced it received an order for 139 turbines for a new wind farm on the eastern plains of Colorado. The order is from Broomfield-based Renewable Energy Systems Americas for a wind farm at Cedar Point, about 75 miles east of Denver. The value of the order wasn't immediately available.

Vestas Wind Systems and its subsidiaries annually manufacture and distribute more than 3,000 on-land and offshore wind turbines used to produce electricity. It offers installation, repair and maintenance services, as well.

Vestas is teamed with Boeing on joint research projects. The company, which began manufacturing wind turbines in 1979, operates through a number of business units. The company gets more than half of its sales in Europe. Vestas employs about 20,300 people worldwide. Revenue in 2009 was EUR 6.6 billion, or about $8.3 billion.