US: ACCIONA Energía renews its investments in the United States with the construction of a 93-megawatt wind farm in Texas

ACCIONA Energía has started construction work on the 93-megawatt (MW) San Roman wind park located near the south-east coast of Texas. It is the eighth wind farm owned by the company in the United States, bringing ACCIONA’s US wind power capacity of 721 MW. The project was acquired by ACCIONA Energía from the developer Pioneer Green Energy.

Located in Cameron County, San Roman will be equipped with thirty-one ACCIONA Windpower AW125/3000 turbines. Each turbine has a rotor diameter of 125 meters and will be mounted on an 87.5 meter steel tower. The new wind farm will be operational towards the end of 2016.

The San Roman Wind Farm will produce enough clean energy to power more than 30,000 U.S. homes. The electricity generated by the project will help create a more reliable power supply for Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, an area that has suffered rolling blackouts in recent years due to a lack of local electric resources. 

As ACCIONA Energy North America CEO Ilya Hartmann explains, “The San Roman wind farm represents ACCIONA’s renewed investment activity in the important United States market. We are working to grow our renewable energy portfolio in the U.S. and Canada and the San Roman project is an important step toward that goal”.

This new installation is expected to benefit from the tax incentive programs for renewable energies that were recently extended by the US Congress, specifically the Production Tax Credit (PTC). This credit represents the main support instrument of the US Government for the development of wind power projects in the country, and is allocated to wind farms during their first 10 years in operation.

The PTC was recently extended to provide credits to wind farms whose construction begins between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2019, a much longer period than the one-year extensions that had been in place previously. This long-term extension will give a great boost to the development of wind power in the country.

Presence in North America

ACCIONA currently has 628 MW of wind power capacity operational in the United States, with three wind farms in Oklahoma (329 MW), one in North and South Dakota (180 MW), one in Illinois (101 MW) and another two in North Dakota and Iowa (12 MW and 6 MW respectively). It also has a 64 MW concentrating solar plant in Nevada.

In nearby countries the company has 181 MW of operational wind power capacity in Canada (in Alberta, Ontario and New Brunswick) and 556 MW in Mexico (all in Oaxaca).

The new wind farm will take ACCIONA Energía to over 1,500 MW of renewables capacity under its ownership in North America.

ACCIONA will invest around 2.5 billion dollars up to 2020 in renewable energy installations worldwide, with an approximate capacity of 1,900 MW.