WORLD’S BIGGEST WIND FOR ROMANIA

Iberdrola Plans World’s Largest Wind Farm in Romania
Todd White and Jeremy van Loon (w/Joao Lima, Irina Savu, Tina Davis and Charles Siler), April 19, 2010 (Bloomberg News via BusinessWeek)

"Iberdrola SA won approval to build the world’s largest onshore wind-energy project in Romania, requiring at least $2 billion in investment through 2017…[I]t acquired rights from the Romanian government to build 1,500 megawatts of capacity. That’s almost five times the power coming from Europe’s largest wind complex…

"Iberdrola, which became the world’s biggest wind-farm owner by using government incentives and charging above-market electricity rates for clean energy, now operates in 10 markets including the U.S. and U.K. The Romanian mega-park, near its operations in neighboring Hungary, may extend the Spanish company’s lead over second-ranked wind producer FPL Group Inc. of Florida."

click to enlarge

"Romania generates much of its electricity by burning oil and gas, which can be easily scaled back during a windy day to allow for surges of power from windmills…[The Romanian] government may approve a law later this year to double the number of “green certificates” eligible for wind power and boost the total price per megawatt-hour by 25 percent…[The] Iberdrola Renovables SA renewable-energy unit plans 50 Romanian wind parks that would supply the equivalent of almost 1 million homes…The project amounts to a third of the new wind power Iberdrola plans for Eastern Europe, after investing 100 million euros there in 2009…

"The average cost to buy and install wind turbines around the world is about 1.3 million euros ($1.75 million) a megawatt…Using those figures, Iberdrola’s Dobrogea project in southeastern Romania on the Black Sea would cost more than $2 billion…Prices for turbines fell about 18 percent last year and wind farm operators like Iberdrola are benefiting from the lower costs…European Union policies to help reduce dependence on fossil fuel-based power generation are also an incentive for the project…"

A turbine in Romania's Tihuta Pass. (from Wikipedia - click to enlarge)

"Like FPL, Iberdrola has grown to be one of the world’s largest investor-owned utilities partly because of rapid expansion in wind energy. Wind and biomass are typically the cheapest sources of renewable energy and plants using them can be built faster than large-scale solar or geothermal installations…[R]anked by megawatts of wind-energy in operation, [Iberdrola] is followed by… Florida-based FPL and China Guodian Corp. of Beijing…

"The Dobrogea complex will dwarf Whitelee, Europe’s current record-holder, a 322-megawatt wind installation near Glasgow that is owned by Iberdrola’s Scottish Power unit. Whitelee is scheduled to be expanded to about 600 megawatts in a few years…The Cape Wind offshore wind project in Nantucket Sound would have capacity of 420 megawatts…Iberdrola’s Romanian partner is Eolica Dobrogea. That company, part-owned by Swiss engineering firm NEK Umwelttechnik AG and C-Tech Srl. and Rokura Srl., both Romanian, will secure building permits…"