Technology

The Basque multinational has announced the opening of its first blade plant on the Asian subcontinent. The aim is to for the plant to produce blades for Gamesa’s G5X-850 kW and G9X-2.0 MW wind turbine systems. Gamesa plans to reinforce its position in India – a country which it sees as strategic to its growth plans – through the opening of this plant.

The Spanish technologist continues to triumph in the Egyptian market, where it recently drew bids from the world's major turbine manufacturers and was awarded the tender to deliver 200 MW of onshore turbines for projects in the Gulf of Suez, which had been put up for bidding.

The Spanish multinational recently announced that it has commissioned the Golice wind farm, in which it reveals that it has made an investment of around 223 million zlotys (€57 million). With an installed capacity of 38 MW, Acciona calculates that the facility will generate clean electricity equivalent to the consumption of around 40,000 Polish homes and will avoid the emission of 77,625 metric tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere per annum.

"Everything is in place to begin the process of awarding the first four sites," reveals Antoni Martínez, Director of the Catalan Institute of Energy Research (IREC), in reference to the Zèfir Test Station. This project involves an offshore wind turbine research and development site, which IREC will establish in waters near the Port of Tarragona. It will also boast the first offshore wind turbine platform in Spain.

A team of researchers led by the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) says it has found a link between birds and wind turbines that "accurately reflects the number of griffon vulture deaths caused by turbines".

At two o'clock in the morning on 6 November, the wind produced 59.7% of the electricity consumed at that time in Spain. The figure exceeds the previous record of 54.1%, achieved in the early hours of 30 December last year.

The multinational from Seville has been chosen by the National Electric Energy Agency of Brazil (ANEEL) to set up three wind farms (64 MW total) in the state of Ceara in north-eastern Brazil. Abengoa will be responsible for constructing, operating and maintaining the facilities for 20 years.

The 56.1-MW Tuppadahalli facility involved an investment of €58 million, is located in the state of Karnataka, and is the third wind farm to be developed by Acciona in India. The Spanish multinational commenced activities on the Asian subcontinent in 2007 with the Arasinagundi wind farm (13.2 MW), erecting its second wind farm the following year: Anabaru (16.5 MW). The three facilities are in Karnataka.

The First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, has presided over the opening of Gamesa’s offshore wind technology centre in the Scottish city of Glasgow. The Spanish multinational reveals that it has invested €14.3 million in this new R&D centre to design and development the Gamesa G14X offshore wind turbine platform, with a unit capacity of 6/7 MW.