With local roadway improvements nearly complete, work has started on ACCIONA Energy’s Palmas Altas wind farm, the company’s ninth wind project in the U.S.
Palmas Altas will be ACCIONA’s second wind farm in Texas and will increase ACCIONA’s U.S. wind power capacity to 866 MW. An investment of around $200 million (over 170 million euros at the current exchange rate), Palmas Altas will have a capacity of 144.9 MW and be equipped with 46 Nordex wind turbines. Anticipated commercial operation date for the project is in November 2019.
An ACCIONA wind farm.
Located in Cameron County, near the San Roman wind farm that ACCIONA started in December 2016, the new facility will produce around 524 GWh of clean energy per year, equivalent to the consumption of 43,000 U.S. households. It will offset the emission of 503,000 metric tons of CO2—the equivalent of taking more than 100,000 cars and trucks off the road. Significant upgrades have already been made to local roads as part of the Palmas Altas project.
“We are proud to be furthering our investment in Cameron County and in the United States,” said Rafael Esteban, CEO of ACCIONA Energy. “The community in South Texas has welcomed us, and we look forward to being neighbors for many years.”
Nordex wind turbines
The Palmas Altas project will employ approximately 170 people at the peak of construction. When complete, a 10-person operations team will staff the wind farm.
The wind turbines installed in Palmas Altas will be Nordex’s AW125/3150 model with a rotor diameter of 125 meters, mounted on an 87.5-meter steel tower (hub height). The energy produced by the wind farm will be sold in the ERCOT-South Texas wholesale market.
ACCIONA currently owns and operates eight wind farms in the United States. In addition to San Roman (93 MW), mentioned above, the company has three others in Oklahoma (329 MW), two in the Dakotas (192 MW), one in Illinois (101 MW), and one in Iowa (6 MW). It also has a 64 MW CSP plant in the Nevada Desert.
In addition to Palmas Altas, ACCIONA Energy has other wind power projects in its pipeline that will increase its operational capacity in the United States.
- An investment of around $200 million, the wind farm will have a capacity of 144.9 MW and be equipped with 46 of Nordex’s AW3150 wind turbines
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