Chile: Senvion wins first wind farm projects totalling 300 MW

The contracts are currently still under conditions precedent. The Sarco and Aurora wind farms are owned by Aela Energia, the Joint Venture between Actis (60%) and Mainstream Renewable Power (40%). The turbines supplied by Senvion for these two projects will provide clean energy for around 196,000 households in total.

Sarco wind farm

For project Sarco, Senvion will supply 50 Senvion 3.4M114 turbines with a hub height of 93 meters. The wind farm is located in the Atacama region of Northern Chile, around 530 kilometres north of Santiago de Chile. Every turbine has a rated output of 3.4 megawatt and will supply around 2,200 households with electricity. After its planned completion in spring 2017, the wind farm will have a total rated output of 170 MW and supply more than 110.000 households per year with electricity.

Aurora wind farm

For project Aurora, Senvion will supply 43 Senvion 3.0M122 turbines with a hub height of 119 meters. Aurora is located in the Los Lagos region, in the Southern part of Chile and about 850 kilometres south from Santiago and 50km from Puerto Montt. Every turbine has a rated output of 3.0 MW and is able to supply around 2,000 households with electricity. After the planned completion in spring 2017, the wind farm will have a total rated output of 129 MW and supply more than 86,000 households per year with electricity.

South America is an important market

Jürgen Geissinger, CEO of Senvion, said: "With regards to our business development, we analyse our core markets as well as potential new markets on a regular basis. South Cone South America is a key part of this strategic growth plan, and with this major contract in Chile, we prove that Senvion is well positioned to expand our activities in our new markets outside of Europe. We continuously make dedicated efforts to reduce the cost of energy of our turbines. For this purpose, we recently launched our new Senvion 3.4M140 - the perfect turbine for low wind speed sites in Chile and other South American countries thanks to its 140-meter rotor diameter and Senvion's high quality."

Eddie O'Connor, CEO of Mainstream said: "We are delighted to sign this agreement which brings us one step closer to delivering 300 megawatts of wind power to Chile. These projects were awarded under a competitive tendering programme last year in which wind energy prices came in below fossil fuel prices, clearly demonstrating once again that renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuel generation. Last year, Mainstream was awarded over 1.2 gigawatts of wind and solar projects in competitive tendering programmes around the world underpinning our position as the leading independent renewable energy company focused on high-growth emerging markets."