Iberdrola starts Romania wind farm construction

The wind turbines facility is phase one of the Dobrogea wind energy Complex, which entails up to 50 wind farm plants with combined capacity of 1,500 MW. Iberdrola Renovables is already the leader wind power company in Eastern Europe, with projects in Poland, Hungary, Estonia and Bulgaria, as well as Romania.

Iberdrola Renovables, global leader in wind power, has begun construction work at the 80 megawatt (MW) Mihai Viteazu wind farm in Romania. This facility will be the company’s first in Romania. The wind farm is being built in the Constanza district in the Dobrogea region in southeast Romania.

The Mihai Viteazu facility is to be built with Gamesa technology (comprising forty 2 MW wind turbines) and will be commissioned by year-end. This wind farm marks phase one in the construction of the Dobrogea wind Complex, the most ambitious renewable energy project in the world to date.

This large-scale project will entail the start-up of as many as 50 wind farms with combined capacity of up to 1,500 MW. The company plans to build these facilities gradually between 2011 and 2017. The output generated by this vast wind complex will enable the company to generate enough power in Romania to supply around one million households, the equivalent of the population of the capital city Bucharest, while also curbing annual CO2 emissions by 1.25 million tonnes.

Iberdrola Renovables has already signed an off-take agreement with the Romanian network operator (Transeléctrica) setting the terms for connecting the planned 1,500 MW of new capacity to the national grid, including the agreement for the grid connection of phase one, encompassing 600 MW. This agreement covers the largest volume of grid-connected wind power in Europe to date.

Iberdrola Renovables is pursuing all its initiatives in Romania with local company Eolica Dobrogea SRL (owned by the Swiss engineering group NEK Umwelttechnik AG and the Romanian companies C-Tech Srl and Rokura Srl). This company, which is at the forefront of the Romanian renewables industry, has been entrusted with the development tasks – planning and obtaining the construction permits – while Iberdrola Renovables is responsible for constructing and operating the wind farms.

The company opened an office in Bucharest in 2009 with a view to further reinforcing its presence in Eastern Europe, where it already has operating wind farms in Poland (161 MW) and Hungary (158 MW) and is backing other developments in Estonia and Bulgaria, making Iberdrola Renovables the leading wind power player in the region.

Iberdrola Renovables, with operations in 23 countries, built more renewable capacity in 2010 than any other utility in the world, bringing 1,780 MW on stream. This has helped strengthen the company’s status as the global leader in renewable energy by capacity (12,532 MW at year-end 2010) and output (25,500 GWh produced last year).

www.iberdrolarenovables.es/