Iberdrola Renewables tops 12,000 megawatts of wind power

The largest capacity increase in the last 12 months has been in the US, where the company has brought 855 MW on stream and taken its total capacity to 4,314 MW, making it the country’s second largest wind utility

Total output at the company’s wind farm facilities around the world reached 18,091 million kWh by the end of the third quarter of 2010, up 20% from the year before.

Iberdrola Renovables, the world leader in wind power, has raised installed capacity by 1,529 megawatts (MW) over the past 12 months to 12,006 MW.

This confirms its status as the world leader in wind turbines. The company has plants in 12 countries, with 5,392 MW of capacity in Spain, 4,314 MW in the US, 910 MW in the UK and 1,189 MW in the rest of the world (mainly the rest of Europe and South America).

The largest capacity increase in the last 12 months has been in the US, where the company has brought 855 MW on stream, making it the country’s second largest wind energy company. A significant part of the company’s growth is in the US, due, among other factors, to the favourable regulatory environment there. To date, Iberdrola Renovables has received nearly $1 billion in grants from the US government, which it will reinvest fully in more projects in the country.

The company’s installed capacity in Spain now stands at 5,593 MW. The capacity of its wind farms has increased by 393 MW over the last year to 5,199 MW. It also has 342 MW of small-scale hydroelectric capacity in Spain, 50 MW at the solar thermal plant in Puertollano, Ciudad Real, and 2 MW at its first forestry biomass power plant in Corduente, Guadalajara.

By region, the largest share of its installed capacity is in Castile-La Mancha (1,981 MW), followed by Castile and León (1,222 MW), Andalusia (803 MW), Galicia (627 MW), Aragon (278 MW), La Rioja (248 MW), the Basque Country (153 MW), Murcia (146 MW), Valencia (56 MW), Navarre (44 MW), Cantabria (23 MW), Extremadura (5 MW) and Madrid (1 MW).

In the UK, the company has 910 MW of installed capacity, having brought on stream a total of 108 MW over the past year.

Iberdrola Renovables’ capacity in the rest of the world stands at 1,189 MW. It has 283 MW in France, 241 MW in Greece, 161 MW in Poland, 124 MW in Hungary, 96 MW in Italy, 92 MW in Portugal, 80 MW in Mexico, 63 MW in Germany and 49 MW in Brazil.

Record wind output

Iberdrola Renovables broke its record wind energy output in the third quarter of 2010, producing 18,091 million kilowatt hours (kWh) at all its facilities around the world, which marks a 20.2% increase on the same period last year.

By country, 7,500 million kWh of this wind power were generated in Spain (an increase of 18.2% compared to the third quarter of 2009), 7,430 million kWh in the US (+29.5%), 1,479 million kWh in the ROW -the rest of Europe and South America (+21.8%) and 984 million kWh in the UK.

Meanwhile, the output of small-scale hydroelectric plants –all of which are located in Spain– totalled 645 million kWh in the quarter, with other technologies, such as biomass or solar thermal, contributing a further 54 million kWh.

www.iberdrolarenovables.es