Honduran President Porfirio Lobo inaugurated Cerro de Hula, Central America's largest wind farm, which has installed capacity totalling 102 MW.
Built by Gamesa and Iberdrola Engineering and outfitted with 51 of Gamesa's G87-2.0 MW turbines, the site will boost Honduras' installed wind capacity by 7%. The Cerro de Hula construction contract is a "turnkey" project and includes maintenance services for a period of two years from the date the facility begins operating.
The site lies 24 kilometres south of Tegucigalpa, in the Cerro de Hula and Izopo mountains, straddling the towns of San Buenaventura and Santa Ana in the department of Francisco Morazán.
The project, in addition to underscoring a clear commitment to sustainable development as a source of clean energy, also heralds significant progress for the region by meeting the energy needs of a broad segment of the population.
The site's owner is Globeleq Mesoamerica Energy, a developer of renewable energy projects in Central America, operating through its local subsidiary Energía Eólica de Honduras (EEH).
The wind farm has a power purchase agreement (PPA) to sell its output to Empresa Nacional de Energía Eléctrica for a period of 20 years, and was financed with funds from the Export-Import Bank of the United States and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration.
Strategic position in Latin America
With the launch of this project, both companies strengthen their strategic positions in Latin America.
Gamesa is one of the world's technological leaders in the global wind energy industry, with 17 years in the business and more than 23,000 MW installed in 30 countries, along with 15,000 MW under maintenance contracts. Latin America and Southern Cone countries have become strategic markets for Gamesa's growth in recent years, accounting for 19% of the company's total sales as of September 2011. Gamesa has more than 30 manufacturing plants in Europe, the United States, China, India and Brazil and employs an international staff of 8,000 people.
IBERDROLA ENGINEERING, a world leader in the construction of wind farms, is building wind projects in Spain, Mexico, the US, France, Brazil, Romania, Kenya, Bulgaria and Poland. In the latter country, it recently landed its tenth wind farm contract, an 82-MW project worth 135 million euros. IBERDROLA ENGINEERING, one of the IBERDROLA Group's core technology businesses, focuses on the design and turnkey construction of energy infrastructure projects in the areas of conventional generation, nuclear power, renewable energies and transmission and distribution networks. It has a portfolio of projects worth more than 2 billion euros in more than 30 countries.