ENDESA starts Italian wind farm, solar in Spain

July 6, 2007 - by Dana Childs, Cleantech Group

Company commissions is new Italian wind farm and is about to break ground on a non-grid tied solar facility in Spain.

ENDESA (NYSE: ELE), the leading Spanish electrical utility, has started up the Poggi Alti wind farm, the largest in Tuscany, with a capacity of 20 MW.

The Poggi Alti facility was built at a cost of €25 million with minimal impact on the surrounding landscape, the company said.

The facility has ten 2 MW turbines with a total installed capacity of 20 MW. Annual output is expected to be around 40.9 GWh, equivalent to energy consumption of 19,000 households.

The farm is equipped with Gamesa G-90 turbines with blades measuring 90 meters in diameter.

Poggi Alti is ENDESA's third Italian wind farm in the last 10 months.

At the same time, the company also announced that it has received a municipal permit to build a 20MW photovoltaic solar energy plant on land in San Roque (Cadiz), Spain—near a 41 MW project now owned by EuroTrust A/S (see EuroTrust to purchase wind projects in Spain, Poland and Italy.)

The first stage of the plant is to have 12.3 MW of installed power covering 37 hectares. Work is to start this month.

The site is near an industrial park, which planners expect will use all of the output of the plant, obviating the need for grid connection.

The project is part of ENDESA’s strategic plan for development of clean energies, which proposes 100 MW of new solar energy plant in the next five years.