Further sales achievement in Italy - WKN Windkraft Nord sells 58 MW wind farm

In Sicily / Italy, project developer WKN Windkraft Nord AG has again sold a major wind farm in cooperation with its Italian subsidiary WKN Italia as well as its Joint Venture Aero-Sol s.r.l. Wind site Rocca Rossa is located in the centre of Sicily about 60 kilometres apart from the city of Palermo.

The 58 megawatts wind farm consists of 29 wind turbines with each two megawatts capacity and 90 m rotor on 95 m hub height. The investor of the project is M & A Rinnovabili s.r.l. partially owned by the South-Italian Moncada Energy Group. The investor will now be responsible for the completion of Rocca Rossa. According to WKN estimation, erection and commissioning of the wind farm could be realized until end of 2009.

The 29 turbines will be connected to the existing 150 KV grid by a new substation to be built. The external cabling with seven kilometres length will follow a provincial road. When the WKN project engineers firstly identified the site some years ago, they named it Rocca Rossa because of the ferrous red stone dominating the landscape.

After the sales and turn-key erection of wind farm Francofonte in 2007, WKN Windkraft Nord AG expands its already existing strong position at the South-Italian market with the greenfield development of Rocca Rossa. During the development of the project the approval procedure proved to be quite demanding compared to Francofonte as Rocca Rossa was approved within a period of major regulative changes. While Francofonte had been approved with 30 single approvals, Rocca Rossa applied to a so-called Autorizzazione Unica. Only one authority certificates the complete approval consulting all other authorities involved within a Conferenzia di Servizi (public discussion procedure). Basically intended as simplification and following to a national legal act, the implementtation of this new proceeding took some time which was mainly reasoned by the prevalent uncertainty of competency of the various authorities involved. Finally, the Autorizzazione Unica was issued end of 2007.

The head of Moncada Energy Group, Salvatore Moncada, has already developed several wind energy projects on Sicily on his own. Moncada Energy Group is operating various wind farms, actually erects production facilities for photovoltaic modules and follows international activities, too.

WKN Italia Managing Director and Project Manager Frank Kraatz especially remembers the non-technical aspects of the development. „When we met the three involved communities of Cammarata, Vallelunga Pratameno and Castronuovo in order to get to know each other, traditional Sicily food has been served on long tables. There we got typical local specialities like Trippa (rumen). Definitely a matter of taste.“