Wind Energy

Wind Prospect sets up in South Africa

Leading independent renewable energy group, Wind Prospect, today announced its intention to open a new office in South Africa and immediately set its sights on becoming the number one service provider to the African wind power market by 2012.

Since launching its Developer Services business in 2009, Wind Prospect has opened offices in emerging markets across Europe including most recently Turkey and Poland.

The African office will open in Cape Town in October [2010] and will service the whole of the African continent, providing wind resource assessment, due diligence and development support services to wind farm developers, banks and financial institutions.

Wind Prospect is already working on 11 contracts across Kenya and South Africa, representing 1.3GW of potential capacity and a major increase on the continent’s 770MW of capacity installed to date.

Wind Prospect’s Head of Advisory Services, David Groves Said:  “Africa is set to become a major international market for renewables. South Africa in particular has huge coal reserves, but is making great progress to reduce its fossil fuel reliance and turn to alternative ways of generating energy.

“With over 20 years’ experience of developing wind energy projects around the world and a global network of over 200 staff; we will be ideally positioned to help underpin this market growth and to provide a heightened level of support to our existing clients.”

As the market grows, Wind Prospect plans to offer additional services and open further offices across the continent. For now the focus remains the ‘financial capital’ of Africa and the burgeoning wind market.

According to the World Wind Energy Report 2009, total installed wind capacity in Africa was 770MW. “All wind turbines installed in Africa in 2009 had a capacity of 770 Megawatt (0,5 % of the total worldwide capacity), out of which 169 Megawatt were added, in two countries, Egypt and Morocco.”

The African office will be part of Wind Prospect’s Developer Services division and will open in Cape Town by October 2010. Its target is to serve the whole African continent providing wind resource assessment, due diligence and development support services to developers, banks and financial institutions.

www.windprospect.com